English Quotes

People take pictures of the Summer, just in case someone thought they had missed it, and to proved that it really existed.

Our repertoire consisted of rhythm and blues, sort of country rhythm and blues, Sonny Terry things.

No one can penetrate me. They only see what's in their own fancy, always.

If New Orleans is allowed to die, a crucial part of the world's music heritage will disappear.

If I had to do my life over, I would change every single thing I have done.

I've written so many songs about Englishmen, I have to go elsewhere.

I'm susceptible to that sort of thing - to walls and flowers. You can probably get something more from a wall than a person sometimes. It's just put somewhere.

I'm easy driving, But I'm not a person who loves living pleasantly above all else. I'm not that way at all. I might think I'm that, but I'm not really that.

I was an art student at the time, like thousands of others.

I still like to keep tapes of the few minutes before the final take, things that happen before the session. Maybe it's superstitious, but I believe if I had done things differently - if I had walked around the studio or gone out - it wouldn't have turned out that way.

I like surfers. Their imagery, it's great.

I got that idea from being in India. I always like the chanting.

I don't think England is that gray but India is like a long drone.

At one time they've been the most important thing to me. So I can't hear our records on the radio, I can't stand it, because they sound so out of what everyone else is doing.

I think that songwriting changed when groups started spending more time in the studio.

What I try to do probably doesn't come out. What I've worked out what I do - I might not be right - is to do something very personal, and then suddenly I look at it, up in the air. I blow it up and look at it and then I come down again - a better man.

Money and corruption are ruining the land, crooked politicians betray the working man, pocketing the profits and treating us like sheep, and we're tired of hearing promises that we know they'll never keep.

You don't underestimate either players or audience in any circumstances.

You can't pander to your audience. You might in the short term, but ultimately you can't hoodwink them, either.

What they can expect always is that they're going to be made to think.

The present government is very insistent that business sponsorship should replace government sponsorship of the arts. Business sponsorship won't happen unless you make tax concessions, which they won't.

The establishment in Britain is certainly against the arts and against education. If something doesn't make a profit, it's invalid, and art doesn't make a profit in that sense.

The demands are related to their questing of the best possible out of the people concerned. It's this going for the highest possible factor that I'm very concerned about.

Recently I've been participating in radio and television talk programs doing broadcasts and conferences, and shooting my mouth off and really going to town.

If you're writing a piece for the Boston Pops, the balance is towards one end. If you're writing a piece for a chamber music society, then it's towards another point. I won't make a final answer on that. I think it changes with every piece.

If you don't get feedback from your performers and your audience, you're going to be working in a vacuum.

If you aim at anything lower that is expecting your audience to be really alert and aware, then you're going to be caught out sooner or later as a composer.

I'm very interested, for instance, in music in education - getting young people not only to listen to, but participate in the music that I write. I consider this one of the most vital aspects of my work.

I'm obviously very keen on the theater and I think it's inevitable that some of the orchestral and chamber pieces have got dramatic elements which might even suggest an unspecified dramatic plot of some kind or other, even though it's not in my mind at the time.

I'm not actually teaching any more, but I am writing pieces for schools all the time, and for kids.