Zoltan Kodaly Quotes

Hearing the blues changed my life.

When you get down to it, the way that the music affects you individually is the most important thing, and when you let things like the location of a band get in the way or have an effect on your overview, you're cheating yourself out of a really good time.

It's so funny because I listen to songs that I recorded that I didn't really know anything about at the time. Later on I'm starting to feel the songs. Sing them first, feel them later.

I was 16 years old, and I was just flailing around, looking for an interest. I heard, you know, these jazz records. They were modern records, at the time in the '50s, and I realized that I didn't fully get what was going on. But I liked a lot of what I heard.

Music was what bothered me, what interested me.

In high school, I would secretly play Joni Mitchell songs all the time. That's when I started singing and playing at the same time, and I got really into doing that.

The best music is the music which brings out something of you that you didn't know was there before, or you did know was there but had avoided.

I had no interest in music. But now, music means everything to me. I have no words to explain how beautiful music is. It is where you can create everything, like beautiful songs to sad songs to almost anything.

I'll tell you what's crazy: Nobody in my family is musically inclined, no form, fashion, anything. I always had some type of connection to music though. This was long before I ever knew that I could sing, or I ever even tried to start singing. It was something different, man, it made me feel some type of way.

I see music as a lifetime affair.

As I listened more and more to the music that moved me, I gained more fascination with America.

It wasn't until I was about 17 or 18 years old that I got into music.

It's pretty cool to see how far music can take you.

I've always loved music, but I never really played anything. After 'Walk the Line' and learning to play guitar, and having that sense of performing, I think that certainly opened the door for me, for music.

Songs come from all over the place. You can't predict what you're going to like. You might like something that doesn't fit right now. What was working for you at one point, something you've loved for years and years, when you get together with everybody, you think, this doesn't match up with what's going on with you personally.

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

Where I've been hasn't influenced my music. It's more what I listen to. You can find music everywhere, so moving hasn't really influenced my music, more me as a person.

If there's a song that stops meaning anything to me, then I'll quit playing it.

I've had so many hot, cheesy, corny loves of music in my life. I had a very intense Billy Joel period. So once you've really Joeled it up - there's some good periods of Joel; it's not all hot cheese. But I can't judge anyone else for their cheese. I've deep-sea dived in the Gouda.

When your hair is rising, that's when you know it's a good song - that's happened to me with some artists and some songs, John Lennon songs or when Nina Simone sings. It's great to make those moments yourself.

Music is like the genius of humankind, universal... People who have never really taken the time to get into music, their lives are a lot smaller. Kids deserve the richness and dimension of it in their lives.

It is a process of discovery. It's being quiet enough and undisturbed enough for a period of time so that the songs can begin to sort of peek out, and you begin to have emotional experiences in a musical way.

Every day I feel different about music, but what never changes is my love for it.

'Tryin' to Get the Feeling' has been a revelation. I'd forgotten how powerful that was. I'd forgotten how deep I can crawl into that one, and maybe because I'm older it means even more.

Since I was a kid, music has been a huge part of my life. My parents had a pretty solid vinyl collection and exposed me to some amazing artists.