Greil Marcus Quotes

The point of opera is that people are moved by the emotions and music.

Applause should be an emotional response to the music, rather than a regulated social duty.

I become involved with things that speak to me and move me and make me laugh and frighten me.

I guess I'm kind of a sucker for the emotion of music. I guess it's kind of odd, but it's the way I appreciate music. I present my stuff that way as well.

I am hard to disgust, but a pretentious poet can do it

The living model, the naked body of a woman, is the privileged seat of feeling, but also of questioning... The model must mark you, awaken in you an emotion which you seek in turn to express.

To be full of joy when looking at an oeuvre is not a little thing.

Art is not about understanding, it’s about experience.

If you stepped out of bounds, or you stepped out of your tumbling path and didn't stick it. By the time you're done, you can count your own damn deductibles to know what your score is about to be. But this is completely different, it's so subjective. There are so many variables that don't make sense. You can't quantify someone's emotional connection to what you feel.

If I could prescribe a single rule for looking at a work of art it would be to enjoy it. If we're honest with ourselves, we have to admit we enjoy our tears just as much as we enjoy our laughter. The only moments of life that are a bore are when we don't care one way or another.

The artist brain is the sensory brain: sight and sound, smell and taste, touch. These are the elements of magic, and magic is the elemental stuff of art. In filling the well, think magic. Think delight. Think fun. Do not think duty. Do not do what you should do-spiritual sit-ups like reading a dull but recommended critical text. Do what intrigues you, explore what interests you; think mystery, not mastery.

I’d rather somebody hate what I do than be indifferent to it.

You really should be able to feel the higher power of music and be moved by it, rather than listening to me waffle on and having to explain it.

I suppose that it doesn't matter whether a song is written or sung by a man or a woman. If the sentiment is there, it captures the audience.

Applause was designed to bemuse and confuse you until it explodes into a chorus that reminds us why we love pop music.

I love sex as much as I love music, and I think it's as hard to do.

When I've heard a piece of music or seen a painting that moves me, it gives me something.

There are no personal revelations other than feelings arising from the work itself

If you want a definition of poetry, say: Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing and let it go at that.

I've been enjoying showing the music I perform to these people who have not heard it before. I think it's kind of interesting in a scientific kind of way. I don't mind either way the outcomes of the shows I've played, I just genuinely find it interesting seeing people's reactions.

I feel I have a responsibility to myself, a responsibility to explain where we're coming from. Because a song or the performance of a song is a lot like a work of art.

I'll go and see anything so long as it amuses me, or moves me. If it doesn't do either I want to go home.

Music is at once the most wonderful, the most alive of all the arts- it is the most abstract, the most perfect, the most pure- and the most sensual. I listen with my body and it is my body that aches in response to the passion and pathos embodied in this music.

Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us, of why and how an old song can move us to tears.

You live for pretentious metaphors.