31 Sound-Inspired Quotes

The realm of sound is vast and deeply woven into the fabric of our daily lives. From the gentle rustling of leaves to the rhythmic pulse of a favorite song, sound has the power to evoke emotions, memories, and inspiration. For those who find a certain magic in the melodies and rhythms that surround us, we've gathered a collection of the top 31 sound-inspired quotes. These words of wisdom, drawn from musicians, writers, and thinkers, celebrate the profound impact that sound has on our world, reminding us of its beauty and influence. Dive in and let these quotes resonate with your soul, as they capture the essence of the acoustic wonders that shape our experiences.

1. “His voice was cloves and nightingales, it took us to spice markets in the Celebs, we drifted with him on a houseboat beyond the Coral Sea. We were like cobras following a reed flute.” - Janet Fitch

2. “If I could record them and transmit them to the present age, they would constitute nothing more, nowadays, than dead sounds. They would be, in a word, sounds other than what they actually were, and from what their phonographic labels pretended they were – since it's in ourselves that the silence exists. It was while the sounds were still mysterious that it would have been really interesting to render the mystery palpable and transferable.” - Auguste de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam

3. “There is in souls a sympathy with sounds:And as the mind is pitch'd the ear is pleasedWith melting airs, or martial, brisk or grave;Some chord in unison with what we hearIs touch'd within us, and the heart replies.” - William Cowper

4. “Dead voices, lost sounds, forgotten noises, vibrations lockstepping into the abyss and now too distant ever to be recaptured!...What sort of arrows would be able to transfix such birds?” - Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

5. “And in any case...there are no more supernatural noises nowadays...” - Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

6. “THAT crazed girl improvising her music.Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,Her soul in division from itselfClimbing, falling She knew not where,Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declareA beautiful lofty thing, or a thingHeroically lost, heroically found.No matter what disaster occurredShe stood in desperate music wound,Wound, wound, and she made in her triumphWhere the bales and the baskets layNo common intelligible soundBut sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea” - William Butler Yeats

7. “I paid the taxi driver, got out with my suitcase, surveyed my surroundings, and just as I was turning to ask the driver something or get back into the taxi and return forthwith to Chillán and then to Santiago, it sped off without warning, as if the somewhat ominous solitude of the place had unleashed atavistic fears in the driver's mind. For a moment I too was afraid. I must have been a sorry sight standing there helplessly with my suitcase from the seminary, holding a copy of Farewell's Anthology in one hand. Some birds flew out from behind a clump of trees. They seemed to be screaming the name of that forsaken village, Querquén, but they also seemed to be enquiring who: quién, quién, quién. I said a hasty prayer and headed for a wooden bench, there to recover a composure more in keeping with what I was, or what at the time I considered myself to be. Our Lady, do not abandon your servant, I murmured, while the black birds, about twenty-five centimetres in length, cried quién, quién, quién. Our Lady of Lourdes, do not abandon your poor priest, I murmured, while other birds, about ten centimetres long, brown in colour, or brownish, rather, with white breasts, called out, but not as loudly, quién, quién, quién, Our Lady of Suffering, Our Lady of Insight, Our Lady of Poetry, do not leave your devoted subject at the mercy of the elements, I murmured, while several tiny birds, magenta, black, fuchsia, yellow and blue in colour, wailed quién, quién, quién, at which point a cold wind sprang up suddenly, chilling me to the bone.” - Roberto Bolaño

8. “Does sound have rhythm? Does it rise and fall like the ocean? Does sound come and go like wind?” - Myron Uhlberg

9. “Music is a mixed mathematical science that concerns the origens, attributes, and distinctions of sound, out of which a cultivated and lovely melody and harmony are made, so that God is honored and praised but mankind is moved to devotion, virtue, joy, and sorrow.” - Christoph Wolff

10. “What chance combination of shadow and sound and his own thoughts had created it?” - Patricia Highsmith

11. “sound is of no use to human evolution. in fact, it gets in the way.” - Haruki Murakami

12. “Sometimes, when people speak, I cease listening to their words and zoom in instead on the cadence, and it can seem lovely, and at other times absurd, all this verbiage, these seemingly random consonants clattering on the string that is sound.” - Rosie O'Donnell

13. “Sound has a profound effect on the senses. It can be both herd and felt. It can even be seen with the mind’s eye. It can almost be tasted and smelled. Sound can evoke responses of the five senses. Sound can paint a picture, produce a mood, trigger the senses to remember another time and place. From infancy we hear sound with our entire bodies. When I hear my own name, I have as much a sense of it entering my body through my back or my hand or my chest as through my ears. Sound speaks to the sensorium; the entire system of nerves that stimulates sensual responce.” - Louis E. Colaianni

14. “We shared a piece of Poncho's apple pie, and I told Poncho about PureTone. Like all serious musicians, he is depressed by the quality of sound the people's music id delivered in today. That is the impression I have gotten from every Musician I have met. Everyone. After he heard PureTone, Ben Bourdon, one of Ben Young's caregivers asked me if I was making war on Apple. I said, "No. I'm waging heavy peace.” - Neil Young

15. “Music is the cup that holds the wine of silence. Sound is that cup, but empty. Noise is that cup, but broken.” - Robert Fripp

16. “My favorite sound in the whole world is your giggle, Anastasia.” - E.L. James

17. “They scribble on notepads,the sound of their pensscratching the judgemental air.” - Emma Cameron

18. “The raw and natural sounds of Aero music don't subtract from it's beauty, instead it creates a rich soundscape for the musician to create within.” - Jim O Rourke

19. “Aerow creates a drawn out sense of pressure with the use of rather simplistic. Quite frankly, [the music] is fantastic.” - Sean Slade

20. “The noise was like, well, it was like a thousand vampire cats clawing on Plexiglas—it made their teeth hurt.” - Christopher Moore

21. “The rain is falling ever harder and all I can hear is the sound of the water. I'm drenched but I can't move.” - Paulo Coelho

22. “I wanted to scream as I stood there, my toes hanging over the edge of the dock. I wanted to let a gut-wrenching howl rip from my disfigured throat toward those clouded skies. I wanted to say every swear word my mother had ever taught me not to say.I would have settled for a cut-off whimper, just as long as some kind of sound came from my lips.” - Keary Taylor

23. “Sound unbound by nature becomes bounded by art.” - Dejan Stojanovic

24. “There is no competition of sounds between a nightingale and a violin.” - Dejan Stojanovic

25. “In an endless silence even screams sound silent.” - Dejan Stojanovic

26. “In every sound, the hidden silence sleeps.” - Dejan Stojanovic

27. “I'm all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else, that I'm something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a cage, born and then dead, born in a cage and then dead in a cage, in a word like a beast, in one of their words, like such a beast, and that I seek, like such a beast, with my little strength, such a beast, with nothing of its species left but fear and fury, no, the fury is past, nothing but fear, nothing of all its due but fear centupled, fear of its shadow, no, blind from birth, of sound then, if you like, we'll have that, one must have something, it's a pity, but there it is, fear of sound, fear of sounds, the sounds of beasts, the sounds of men, sounds in the daytime and sounds at night, that's enough, fear of sounds all sounds, more or less, more or less fear, all sounds, there's only one, continuous, day and night, what is it, it's steps coming and going, it's voices speaking for a moment, it's bodies groping their way, it's the air, it's things, it's the air among the things, that's enough, that I seek, like it, no, not like it, like me, in my own way, what am I saying, after my fashion, that I seek, what do I seek now, what it is, it must be that, it can only be that, what it is, what it can be, what what can be, what I seek, no, what I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, they say I seek what it is I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, what it can possibly be, and where it can possibly come from, since all is silent here, and the walls thick, and how I manage, without feeling an ear on me, or a head, or a body, or a soul, how I manage, to do what, how I manage, it's not clear, dear dear, you say it's not clear, something is wanting to make it clear, I'll seek, what is wanting, to make everything clear, I'm always seeking something, it's tiring in the end, and it's only the beginning.” - Samuel Beckett

28. “I have been so very, very fortunate in my life. I've met or been in contact with several of my childhood heroes. I've interacted with people all over this planet, and even though I couldn't possibly hope to remember all their names, I remember a photograph, a poem, a sound, a joke, kind words of encouragement. All is not lost.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

29. “Love is inaudible—until you hear it. And once you do, you’ll never forget the sound of her voice.
” - Dark Jar Tin Zoo

30. “Sound is the most absorbent medium of all, soaking up histories and philosophical systems and physical surroundings and encoding them in something so slight as a single vocal quaver or icy harpsichord interjection.” - Geoffrey O'Brien

31. “Christmas is the marriage of chaos and design. The real sound of life, for once, can burst out because a formal place has been set for it. At the moment when things have gotten sufficiently loose, the secret selves that these familiar persons hold inside them shake the room...An undercurrent of clowning and jostling is part of the process by which we succeed finally in making our necessary noise: despite the difficulty of getting the words right, of getting the singers on the same page, of keeping the ritual from falling apart into the anarchy of separate impulses. From such clatter--extended and punctuated by whatever instrument is handy, a triangle a tambourine, a Chinese gone--beauty is born.” - Geoffrey O'Brien