Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes

When words leave off, music begins.

Words felt so clumsy when she was talking about feelings and not facts.

I like to work with people who have a sense of putting a song over, and can sing in tune, and with passion. With technology you can polish a turd, but there's still no button you can press for passion.

One listens to a piece of great music, say, and feels deeply moved by it, and wants to put this feeling into words, but it can't be put into words. That's what - the music has already supplied the meaning, and words will just be superfluous after that. But it's that kind of verbal meaning that can't be verbalized that I try to get at in poetry.

It was all those biographies in me yelling, 'We want out. We want to tell you what we've done to you.'

I have a tendency to talk extremely fast. ... I think the fastness comes from the fact that I get very excited about things and I just want to spit them out.

Sometimes,' he whispered at last, 'sometimes, I dream I am singing, and I wake from it with my throat aching.' He couldn't see her face, or the tears that prickled at the corners of her eyes. 'What do you sing?' she whispered back. She heard the shush of the linen pillow as he shook his head. 'No song I've ever heard, or know,' he said softly. 'But I know I'm singing it for you.

The first song I wrote was called "You" and it was a love song about somebody who didn't even exist. I remember them all because I used to always write terrible poetry. I keep all my notebooks.

Sang in tones of deep emotion Songs of love and songs of longing.

The world has kissed my Soul with its pain, asking for its return in Songs.

There is no passion that is not finely expressed in those parts of the inspired writings which are proper for divine songs and anthems.

I learned how to be more theatrical and have more fun, and to take a song and sing it over and over again in different ways, and make it different each time. I'm not just singing the song - it's this thing that's affecting me.

The poet must put on the passion he wants to represent.

John could write a mean song. He had a lot of venom in him. Whereas I had a happy childhood.

I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.

Song is the heroics of speech.

I don't like the word "happy." I wouldn't want to use it that context. I enjoy writing songs, it's a really good challenge, it tickles me. It's a wonderful way to engage with your surroundings, through poetry and songs.

There's an infinite amount of possibilities and detours and things that can distract you from actually just performing the song and having whatever emotion that's invested into the song come through in the recording.

I think that the song, the song "Stand By Me" is one of those songs that... and someone asked me, what was you thinking about or what was you feeling about? It's something that, songwriters just write songs. It's like an artist that paints. They paint what they feel. It's not, it's not about how many of these painting I'll sell it's just how they feel at the moment. And that's how I wrote "Stand By Me".

But it’s there. Just because I haven’t told anyone doesn’t mean it isn’t there, all the time, lurking in the back of my mind, like one those NSync songs you can’t get out of your head.

I want someone to say, "I love you and that's all I really know." That's the girly girl in me.

One of the most difficult things to say to another person is, 'I hope that you will love me for no good reason.' But it is what we all want and rarely dare to say to one another, to our children, to our parents and mates, to our friends, and to strangers, especially to strangers who have neither good, nor bad reasons to love us.

The love song must be born into the realm of the irrational, absurd, the distracted, the melancholic, the obsessive, the insane for the love song is the noise of love itself and love is, of course, a form of madness.

Meanwhile music pounded / across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being / a self in a song.