51 Musician Quotes To Inspire

Music has an unparalleled ability to evoke emotions, tell stories, and connect people across different cultures and backgrounds. Musicians, the orchestrators of this universal language, often share profound insights that extend far beyond their melodies and lyrics. Whether you're seeking motivation, comfort, or a spark of creativity, the wisdom of these artists can offer valuable perspectives. In this post, we've curated a collection of the top 51 musician quotes to inspire and resonate with every music lover and aspiring creative. Let these eloquent words from renowned musicians guide and uplift your spirit.

1. “A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.” - Tom Waits

2. “An entrepreneur without funding is a musician without an instrument.” - Robert A. Rice Jr.

3. “When I'm dead, I want to be remembered as a musician of some worth and substance.” - Freddie Mercury

4. “We are not just Art for Michelangelo to carve, he can't rewrite the agro of my furied heart- Lady Gaga 10/22/10” - Lady Gaga

5. “I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That's when I was born.” - Charlie Parker

6. “It was the hardest boyfriend I ever had to break up with [referring to crystal methamphetamines]” - Fergie

7. “When they say the sky's the limit to me that's really true” - Michael Jackson

8. “To do something that you feel in your heart that's great, you need to make a lot of mistakes. Anything that's successful is a series of mistakes.” - Billie Joe Armstrong

9. “A guy walks up to me and asks, "What's Punk?". So I kick over a garbage can and say. "That's punk!". So he kicks over the garbage can and says, "That's Punk?", and I say, "No that's trendy!” - Billie Joe Armstrong

10. “Attack your instruments. Don't let them attack you.” - Billie Joe Armstrong

11. “I have a daughter and she's the greatest thing that ever happened to me. She gives me a good excuse to watch cartoons.” - Mike Dirnt

12. “You can't change the wind but you can set your sails.” - Billie Joe Armstrong

13. “‎The day you become old is the day you're not looking for new experiences anymore.” - Billie Joe Armstrong

14. “I like the smell of my Grandma's soap - I used to sit in the bath and eat it.” - Carl Barât

15. “I've probably been spit on more that any person alive outside of, I would say, a member of the prison system.” - Iggy Pop

16. “Drawing and Drinking Coffe” - Gerard Way

17. “I started to be really proud of the fact I was gay even though I wasn't” - Kurt Cobain

18. “I was so self-critical. I still am; but it's not as bad anymore.” - Fiona Apple

19. “I've gone through stages where I hate my body so much that I won't even wear shorts and a bra in my house because if I pass a mirror, that's the end of my day.” - Fiona Apple

20. “Nothing that you do will ever feel good if you let people convince you that you have no choice.” - Fiona Apple

21. “When you're surrounded by all these people, it can be lonelier than when you're by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don't feel like you can trust anyone or talk to anybody, you feel like you're really alone.” - Fiona Apple

22. “The truth is, anyone who puts so much of herself and her life into art as you do must naturally fear any failure in that art as a potential threat to your life. And so you protect your art more than you protect your health or the common forms of happiness the rest of us have. And you probably have this in common with every artist you admire.” - Arthur Phillips

23. “You can't learn to fly if you're not prepared to crash” - Joe Brooks

24. “Fate and your dreams can collide” - Joe Brooks

25. “Goliath was the best thing that ever happened to David” - Carla Lynne Hall

26. “They've got organizations for people like me with stupid preoccupations.” - Vic Chesnutt

27. “I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation.” - Criss Jami

28. “If I knew what to doI'd do more than write a song for you” - Criss Jami

29. “Miss, I'd gladly pay you to remove your clothes.” - David Scheier

30. “I regret profoundly that I was not an American and not born in Greenwich Village. It might be dying, and there might be a lot of dirt in the air you breathe, but this is where it's happening.” - John Lennon

31. “Composing gives me great pleasure... there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.” - Clara Schumann

32. “The greatest artists express their inner self; an artist paints her rage; a writer pens his fear; a dancer expresses her sadness through movement; and a musician's loneliness echoes in his performance.” - Gerard de Marigny

33. “It is only by demanding the impossible of the piano that you can obtain from it all that is possible. For the psychologist this means that imagination and desire are ahead of the possible reality. A deaf Beethoven created for the piano sounds never heard before and thus predetermined the development of the piano for several decades to come. The composer's creative spirit imposes on the piano rules to which it gradually conforms. That is the history of the instrument's development. I don't know of any case where the reverse occurred.” - Heinrich Neuhaus

34. “I know a flute player is technically called a "flautist," but something about it sounds a little sketchy, as does "pianist," so I will refrain.” - Julie Halpern

35. “I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything.” - James Baldwin

36. “It might seem that the empirical philosopher is the slave of his material, but that the pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.” - Bertrand Russell

37. “I don't believe that I'm better than anybody, but I do believe that I'll try harder than most and I hope that people just join me for a little bit of a ride.” - Tom DeLonge

38. “This writer, he was going on about the lyrics to "Champagne Supernova", and he actually said to me: ‘You know, the one thing that’s stopping it being a classic is the ridiculous lyrics.’ And I went: ‘What do you mean by that?’ And he said: ‘Well, Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball — what’s that mean?’ And I went: ‘I don’t fucking know. But are you telling me, when you’ve got 60,000 people singing it, they don’t know what it means? It means something different to every one of them.” - Noel Gallagher

39. “I love you all; I love you more than life itself, but you're all fucking mad.” - Ozzy Osbourne

40. “Dealing with backstabbers, there was one thing I learned. They're only powerful when you got your back turned.” - Eminem

41. “I might talk about killing people, but that doesn't mean I do it.” - Eminem

42. “My heart is broke, but I have some glue, help me inhale and mend it with you.” - Kurt Cobain

43. “Music is always a healer. Music has never let me down. I know it’s my religion. There’s the idea that you can’t truly know happiness until you know sadness, so how can you heal yourself unless you’ve hurt yourself? I’m still figuring out who I am, but I know that I’m not who I was.” - brendon urie

44. “Liberace was certainly master and commander of the ivories ~ he is the only pianist I can watch or listen to without suffering a case of 'Stagefright Sympathy Sickness'.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

45. “Everyone is broken-hearted except for the drastically unimaginative” - Paul Banks

46. “I thought that if I owned nothing, had nothing, was nothing, I would have nothing left to lose, and I wouldn't be scared anymore. Because my whole life I’ve been so damn scared. Scared to live because I was scared to die. But at the same I was so scared of living, so I wanted to die. Or maybe so scared of dying that I refused to live. You don't have to be afraid to fall, when you're already on the ground. You don't have to be scared to lose someone, when there's no one around to lose.” - Charlotte Eriksson

47. “You read and write and sing and experience, thinking that one day these things will build the character you admire to live as. You love and lose and bleed best you can, to the extreme, hoping that one day the world will read you like the poem you want to be.” - Charlotte Eriksson

48. “... Kenny G is extremely talented and resourceful and a powerful force to be reckoned with ... Mr. G might not seem evil, but I fear him more than any other human being.” - Matthew Quick

49. “Everyone wanted me to be the bad boy, the label wanted it, the publicists wanted it, but I was just trying to be myself.” - Cassandra Giovanni

50. “For so long music has been my heart, but now it's you...you're my heart.” - Cassandra Giovanni

51. “I've loved many women...I'm not going to lie to you, but it never works...vanity always gets in the way.” - Cassandra Giovanni