Top 142 Quotes & Sayings by Jeff Buckley - Page 2

I disoriented myself from everything about being a human being and just played and played and played and sang and sang and sang.

Grace is a quality in people that I just enjoy. It's a very human quality.

When I was 12, I decided to become a musician. 'Physical Graffiti' was the first album I ever owned.

The thing about a music career is that it ain't over until the fat lady sings. Look at all the times people threw in the towel on Dylan - or Neil Young. Remember when Young was doing things in the '80s like 'Trans' and the rockabilly album and being completely lambasted by critics who now think he is wonderful again?

I'm concerned with the future. I'm concerned with my life, my present, my friends, people I love, people who love me. I have no intention of taking on a legacy that wasn't bestowed on me.

I just think too much sometimes.

There are thousands of great artists that wouldn't be doing the same kind of work if there were no music business machine. The ones who are popular would be doing much different work, too. Michael Bolton would be pumping gas.

If you're going to write, then write a novel with a Haitian woman in it and try and describe her accurately. When you can do that, you can write about people.

I just let the emotion dictate what the arrangement is.

There are times when what you do will be mysterious to everyone... times when you have to change directions before people are ready. Just because someone does something that critics don't like or understand doesn't mean you're failing as a musician. It probably means you're growing.

On my record cover, you can barely see my face. I still think I look really geeky.

Maybe someday, I'll just make, like, a complete on-demand record that everybody wants to hear. But that would be impossible and, also, I just changed my mind. I don't think I'll ever do that.

More than any other place, New York is where I felt I belonged. I prefer the Lower East Side to any place on the planet. I can be who I am there, and I couldn't do that anywhere I lived as a child. I never fit in when I lived in California, even though that's where my roots are.

I'm far from being a consummate artist. I mean, this is just my first album, and the work is very new. I'm just beginning, and I'm certainly not worthy of demigod status. There's absolutely no danger of me reaching that.

The words come from here. From memories, from dreams, from people I've known. I'm always writing and reflecting on life. I want to suck it all in.

I figured if I played in the no-man's land of intimacy, I would learn to be a performer.

I have a lot of my mother in me, but I was just born with the same parts as my father. I don't sound like him. I mean, I can do an impression of him right now, and I do not sound like him. I sound like me. My sense of rhythm I learned from my mother. My melodies, I think sometimes, I get from my mother.

Critics... They're like traffic cops. They say what they have to say, then leave, and another guy moves in ,and he has his say - and it's often just the opposite. The result is either critical acclaim or critical murder, and neither has any bearing on my music or direction.

I dunno... I feel out of step. Musically. Just out of step, not even behind or ahead. Just sort of like... I dunno, sometimes I feel like I'm still... just not... in sync. I don't know how to explain it. I just am.

People have a certain perfection about them, no matter who they are. Like when Janis Joplin sang. Gorgeous!

You can't be, like, smashing guitars against Marshall stacks all the time. As a matter of fact, after a while, it just looks like posing - it never really gets down to any message or any real expression.

When I was a kid. I started writing when I was 13. I got my first electric guitar when I was 13, but I'd always been singing. I had my first little acoustic when I was six. But I started being in bands when I was 13. Crappy rock bands, avant-garde things where we'd, like, 'wanna go against the norm, man.'

I'm sick of all these labels and these manufactured subdivisions of music that don't even exist. And even though I'm pierced myself, I'm sick of everyone equating body piercing with musical courage. If you ask me, it takes a lot more than that.

I'm not 'Grace.' That album is like a brick onto itself. It's like a coffin that I put certain feelings and observations in so that they can be capsulized forever. I wanted to put them there so I would be free to move on.

I'm convinced part of the reason I got signed is because of who I am, and it makes me sad.

I've always liked the electric guitar better. Even though the acoustic can be a very sexy and mysterious instrument, I can go to way more places with an electric.

I once tried to sing jazz for real. But jazz didn't do it for me. You can't have jazz without a jazz world, which doesn't exist anymore.

There's the moon asking to stay long enough for the clouds to fly me away

I prefer to learn everything through music. If you want divinity, the music in every human being and their love for music is pretty much it. It's the big indication of their spirituality and their ability to love and make love, or feel pain or joy, and really manifest it, really be real.

I don’t know, I don’t know that I’m missing anything. I just think too much sometimes. Sometimes I’m even happy because I’m so engaged in the thinking. But that’s the great thing about performing, and why it is also sexual, because in that moment – or in that evening – I’m completely in the present for once in my life. Nothing that came before or anything that may come after: only what matters is now. And that’s what human beings crave.

I think I would really lay down and die. Music comes from a very primal, twisted place. When a person sings, their body, their mouth, their eyes, their words, their voice says all these unspeakable things that you really can't explain but that mean something anyway. People are completely transformed when they sing; people look like that when they sing or when they make love. But it's a weird thing—at the end of the night I feel strange, because I feel I've told everybody all my secrets.

Sometimes if somebody you feel you need... the whole universe tells you that you have to have her, you start watching her favorite TV shows all night, you start buying her the things she needs, you start drinking her drinks, you start smoking her bad cigarettes, you start picking up her nuances in her voice, you sleep in safe sometimes the most dangerous thing... this is called Mojo Pin.

Music needs to have a real sacred setting for people to understand it. You've got to start things off with friends who are like-minded or even strangers that are like-minded. Sending your music to established artists or labels or magazine, I mean there is something to be said for tenacity, for trying to pursue recognition that way, but it just doesn't make sense for the best work. And if you do make an amazing work, it's sometimes not the best way to be heard. You have to get on a sacred space, like a stage, and do your testifying that way.

Too young to hold on and too old to just break free and run

Grace is what matters. In anything. Especially life, especially growth, tragedy, pain, love, death. About people, that's what matters. That's a quality I admire very greatly. It keeps you from reaching for the gun too quickly; it keeps you from destroying things too foolishly; it sort of keeps you alive and keeps you open for more understanding.

My kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder It's never over, all my riches for her smiles when I slept so soft against her... It's never over, All my blood for the sweetness of her laughter... It's never over, She's a tear that hangs inside my soul forever.

Sensitivity isn't about being wimpy. It's about being so painfully aware that a flea landing on a dog is like a sonic boom

Turn your head away from the screen, my friend. It will tell you nothing more.

The music can tell people everything they need to know about being human beings. It's not my information, it's not mine. I didn't make it. I just discovered it.

Love, anger, depression, joy and dreams. ...And Zeppelin. Totally.

But music seems to me to be the most closely identified with my soul. I mean, I feel that it’s the best for me. It just gets into the bloodstream so quickly, for no reason at all. You can close your heart, and you can sleep even with your eyes closed, but you can never close your ears.

Be seriously involved with growing, with your own development, and never fear. Be the kind of person who is naturally powerful, positive, ingenious, open, to the highest degree. Be the best. No negativity. No weakness. No acquiescence to fear or disaster. No errors of ignorance. No evasion to reality.

I love anything that haunts me...and never leaves

There's no time for hatred, only questions. Where is love? Where is happiness? What is life? Where is peace?

Music should be like making love. Sometimes you want it soft and tender, another time you want it hard and aggressive.

We are born to live, we are born to understand, we are born to carry a cursed pattern and be transformed by pain.

If you feel blocked, do not turn to others, but look inside, in silence, for the enemy of your progress.

Above all do not give yourself airs. Breaking the moment of past habits is the challenge here: In the life of the spirit you are always at the beginning.

You can't kill the past by denying the past. You can kill it only by making it obsolete. And even in that, you have to find honor in the past. You can't hack off pieces of yourself, and expect them to grow again.

The only goal is in the process. The process is the thing…with little flashes of light here and there. Those are the gigs, those are the live shows. But it's the life in between—that's all I got.

Time to write and sing, to laugh, to listen, to discover, to cry, to love music.

When all of this music sounds like you know what you want to say, then it will have been of all worth, ever. You will be something complete unto yourself, present and unique.

Your soul can fly outward, stringed to your ribcage like a shimmering kite in the shape of an open hand. Be still and listen to the evidence of your own holiness.

I just want to have a completely adventurous, passionate, weird life.

Music is my mother and my father; it is my work and my rest...my blood...my compass...my love.

I have no advice for anybody; except to, you know, be awake enough to see where you are at any given time, and how that is beautiful, and has poetry inside. Even places you hate.

Somebody asked me what I wanted to do. I just said I wanted to…just to give back to it what it’s given me. And to meet all the other people that are doing it…just to be in the world, really.

My favorite kind of music is the stuff that stops time. You put something on to sit there and let an experience go through you. To look at yourself clearly through a song. It's true of all art, all mediums, but for some reason music has a direct line straight into people.

love is not a victory march, it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah.

[What I want to communicate] doesn't have a language with which I can communicate it. The things that I want to communicate are simply self-evident, emotional things. And the gifts of those things are that they bring both intellectual and emotional gifts - understanding. But I don't really have a major message that I want to bring to the world through my music. The music can tell people everything they need to know about being human beings. It's not my information, it's not mine. I didn't make it. I just discovered it.