Top 82 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Lyricists

Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought.

The only good thing about America is that you killed John Lennon.

For you wake one day, look around and say, somebody wonderful married me.

When you collaborate, you have to be willing to scrap a lot.

To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe, to bear with unbearable sorrow, to run where the brave dare not go, to right the unrightable wrong, to love pure and chaste from afar, to try when your arms are too weary, to reach the unreachable star. This is my quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far. To fight for the right, without question or pause, to be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause. And I know if I’ll only be true to this glorious quest that my heart will be peaceful and calm when I’m laid to my rest.

Close your eyes and let music set you free.

Tiptoe through the tulips with me.

Jazz is an art form that depends on its antecedents, there must be respect for the people that have gone before.

Picture you upon my knee, just tea for two and two for tea.

Forget your troubles and just get happy.

You're never fully dressed without a smile.

Tranquil as a forest, but on fire within, once you find your center, you are sure to win.

When you fall, never get up without gaining anything. Always find something on the way up. If there are only rocks, grasp one to throw in order to defend yourself.

All television is children's television.

When a lovely flame dies, Smoke gets in your eyes.

The dramatist's function is (1) to earn a living for his family and himself and (2) to try to entertain people for a few hours.

Happy days are here again, The skies above are clear again: Let us sing a song of cheer again, Happy days are here again!

I'll never let you see, the way my broken heart is hurting me, I've got my pride and know how to hide all my sorrow and pain, I'll do my crying in the rain.

Her beauty was sold for an old man's gold. She's a bird in a gilded cage.

No matter how high or great the throne, What sits on it is the same as your own.

A Russian child asked his mother : "does God know we don't believe in Him?"

Did God who gave us flowers and trees, Also provide the allergies?

The rumble of a subway train, the rattle of the taxis.

Mike Vax plays trumpet the way you have to play in order to hold down the lead chair with Stan Kenton.

How the world can change, It can change like that, Due to one little word: "Married.

As far as I remember, there was no actual lyric written to that.At the very beginning of "Fiddler on the Roof," there's a violin solo, an unaccompanied violin solo.

Virtue is its own revenge.

I think solitude is a really positive thing. I cherish solitude immensely. In today’s society, there’s so much pressure to communicate, eat out, be friends with people. Why can’t you read a book on your own? Why have you got to have a book club?

The Perfect Gentlemen are perfectly delightful, musically superb and thoroughly entertaining.

Lives of great men all remind us greatness takes no easy way.

When the melody touches your heart emotionally and the words hit your brain intellectually, more than likely you'll find you'll have an excellent song to sing.

Ira [Gershwin] was the shyest, most diffident boy we had ever known. In a class of lower east side rapscallions, his soft-spoken gentleness and low-keyed personality made him a lovable incongruity. He spoke in murmurs, hiding behind a pair of steel-rimmed glasses..Ira had a kid brother who wore high stiff collars, shirts with cuffs and went out with girls.

Trouble follows me wherever I go. Thing I'm in is just a sack o'woe.

Life is what you do while you're waiting to die.

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres. Gaul as a whole is divided into three parts.

What good is sitting alone in your room? Come hear the music play; Life is a cabaret, old chum, Come to the cabaret.

We all decided that from the start, me and Richey can't write music but we can write lyrics and look pretty tarty.

Love was not something that people married for generally in those days. They married for security. They married for economic reasons, you know, companionship - but not love.

Floating, falling, sweet intoxication. Touch me, trust me, savour each sensation. Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in.

It's a Barnum and Bailey world, Just as phony as it can be...

WHERE and WHEN, Are lost in space. THERE and THEN, Do not embrace. So before we disappear, Come sweet NOW and kiss the HERE.

My whole family has been having trouble with immigrants ever since we came to this country.

I'd heard that Lenny Bruce used a lot of profanity and obscenities in his act, and I was curious.

When I'm not near the girl I love, I love the girl I'm near.

Someday I'll wish upon a star.

Lives of great men all remind us, Greatness takes no easy way, All the heroes of tomorrow, Are the heretics of today. Socrates and Galileo, John Brown, Thoreau, Christ, and Debs, Heard the night cry "Down with traitors!" And the dawn shout "Up the rebs!"

Life is a cabaret, old chum! Come to the Cabaret.

If literature or music can make you think or become aware, then it's done something. That's what we've always wanted to do, just ignite sparks in people's minds. We can't offer a manifesto of how to make your life better.

They who meet on an April night are forever lost in love, if there's moonlight all about and there's no moon above.

Say, it's only a paper moon, / Sailing over a cardboard sea.

If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why can't I?

We gotta be free - The eagle and me. see Amelia Jenks Bloomer, Emancipation of Women

Where the underworld can meet the elite, Forty-Second Street.

As the writer of the lyric of the song 'God's Country,' I am outraged by the suggestion that somehow I am connected with, believe in, or am sympathetic with Communist or totalitarian philosophy.

Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?

Dream the impossible dream.

We're in the money, the skies are sunny; old man depression, you are through, you done us wrong!

How are things in Glocca Mora this fine day?

The greatest romance in the life of a lyricist is when the right word meets the right note; often, however, a Park Avenue phrase elopes with a Bleecker Street chord, resulting in a shotgun wedding and a quickie divorce.

I am a rebel by birth... I contest anything that is unjust, that causes suffering in humanity. My feelings about that are so strong, I don't think I could live with myself if I weren't honest.