Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Today it's fashionable to talk about the New Economy, or the Information Economy, or the Knowledge Economy. But when I think about the imperatives of this market, I view today's economy as the Value Economy. Adding value has become more than just a sound business principle; it is both the common denominator and the competitive edge.
Think how different it is to experience a word than a sound. When you're hearing a singer, you're controlled by the words, because you understand the language, you know what they're talking about, and you're forced to think about what they're talking about. But when you're hearing that same thing without a word, you're free to wander.
I know that sounds so circular, but for you, what you were made to do, is different than what I was made to do. But instead of spending all of our time having Bible studies about what we were made to do, go do stuff and you'll figure out what you were made to do, because you'll be great at some things and you'll be terrible at others.
There are many, many nouns for the act of looking - a glance, a glimpse, a peep - but there's no noun for the act of listening. In general, we don't think primarily about sound. So I have a different perspective on the world; I can construct soundscapes that have an effect on people, but they don't know why. It's a sort of subterfuge.
And the sound of your heart," he continued. "It's the most significant sound in my world. I'm so attuned to it now, I swear I could pick it out from miles away. But neither of these things matter. This," he said, taking my face in his hands. "You. That's what I'm keeping. You'll always be my Bella, you'll just be a little more durable.
I think the Beach Boys' legacy is 'Fun, Fun, Fun,' you know? We're calling our next tour '50 Years of Fun, Fun, Fun.' By and large, the Beach Boys' legacy is about incredibly positivity. We've traveled around the world and uplifted the spirits of hundreds of millions of people. Our sound is one of the most recognizable in all of music.
You are to set your own value, communicate that value to the world, and then not settle for less. Sound daunting? That's just because it takes you out of your comfort zone. You have got to stop being an obstacle on your own path to wealth and security and happiness. You must understand that valuing yourself is well within your control.
Being appointed as the next Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester is a completely overwhelming honour. This extraordinary orchestra and its wonderful musicians are unique in so many respects, and particularly in their creation of an exceptional sound world based on outstanding tradition that is, at its heart, inspirational.
In terms of influence, my style icons have been a mixture of Julie Andrews and Olivia Newton-John. When I was little I used to watch 'Grease,' 'Mary Poppins' and 'The Sound of Music' a lot. If you put all those things together you do kind of get my outfits. A slightly tarty nanny in a second-hand outfit. That is pretty much what I wear.
I have my set rigged with the biggest sound system possible and have a mini jack for my iPod attached to my director's chair. I find playing music is a very direct way to communicate with actors and the crew, especially those crew members who are on the periphery of the set. I like dancing on set too, it's a good way to release tension.
I have full faith in people. I think that we have the ability to change. We're habitual creatures. Once we figure out that bad habit and identify it, whether it's behavioral or whatever it may be, we change our habits. Obviously, I'm simplifying it and making it sound very easy to do, and we all know it's very difficult, but it's doable.
I'm not going to say I'm not a fan, but I'm a fan of house music, essentially, and kind of indie, and I was always into the kind of sub-pop Seattle Mud Honey and Pearl Jam kind of sound. But my kind of big love was house music ever since I was 15/16, going to raves when I was 15 or 16 years old and not going to school, like a naughty boy.
As a viewer, that's work I respond to - work that I know is singular in some way. If I'm being challenged by something on screen, if I don't quite know why it's happening, I want to know I can do the work of pulling it apart and that there'll be something satisfactory about it. If the architecture is sound, you can be lyrical in execution.
- Every time someone cries out in prayer and I can't answer, I feel guilty about not being God. - That doesn't sound good. - I understand that I have a problem, and I know what I need to do to solve it, all right? I'm working on it. Of course, Harry hadn't said what the solution was. The solution, obviously, was to hurry up and become God.
I think Korea is so focused on just the charts, and what's going to chart and what's not, and I'm sure it's like that way in the States as well, to a certain degree. But I enjoy working in the States a little bit more. Because it's more about making music that is the right sound and the right fit to me, not so much just chasing the charts.
Having campaigned to remain in the E.U., I voted to trigger Article 50, in response to the clearly expressed wish of the electorate. It must now be my duty as an MP to try to ensure that Brexit is as smooth as possible and that there is a sound legislative framework in place to bring this about. A chaotic departure is in no-one's interest.
I have a very awesome seat in the house every time I play. When the lights come up, and the sound turns on, I'm playing for a roomful of human beings. And geographical and political borders just all dissolve. And we unite through rhythm inhalation. I mean, I'm so grateful that, you know, audiences around the world connect to English music.
I was freaking out when Brooks & Dunn were breaking up. I thought 'We play a ton of rodeos, and I thought this was such a cowboy deal, and I don't wear a hat. They might not think I'm a cowboy. That might sound ridiculous to a lot of people, but apparently, it meant something to me. I wound up with a cowboy tattoo from my elbow to my wrist.
What happened in the early days of Disney is that Walt Disney used all of the new technologies as they came out. When matting came out, they adopted it. They adopted sound and color and xerography. Walt did that. And then, when he died, people began to think that this is just about making films, so they stopped bringing in new technologies.
I always knew I was going to be an artist. It was a done deal right from when I was very little. It sounds like the dumbest thing ever, but my mom used to doodle when she was on the telephone and she made these - they weren't just little scribbles - these little shapes and forms. I don't know why she did it. I've never seen her do it again.
Until very recently, most knowledge was inaccessible to people who couldn't read text. But this is changing. The computer opens up other channels of gaining knowledge. If someone is blind, we now have very good machines that will read to him. If someone can't recognize letters, he also will have access to knowledge through sound and images.
For a lot of people, 'Dungeons & Dragons' has been a hard thing to describe. I can't tell you how many social environments I've been in where I say, 'I play 'D&D,'' and a bunch of normies will be like, 'How does the game even work? What's that like?' I didn't have anything to really describe it that didn't make me sound like a crazy person.
A Web site that promotes flow is like a gourmet meal. You start off with the appetizers, move on to the salads and entrees, and build toward dessert. Unfortunately, most sites are built like a cafeteria. You pick whatever you want. That sounds good at first, but soon it doesn't matter what you choose to do. Everything is bland and the same.
I often get asked, 'Is the book dead?' It hasn't happened yet. It's different than music. Music was always meant to be pure sound - it started out as pure sound and now it's pure sound again. But books started out as things. Words on paper began as words on paper. The paperback book is the best technology to deliver that information to you.
Colombia was a big wheat producer in the 1950's. That was eliminated by what sounds like a nice plan, called "Food for Peace. " It's a plan by which US taxpayers subsidized US agribusiness to send food to poor countries. This, of course, destroyed the domestic agricultural markets of these countries, opening these markets to US agribusiness.
The music of Gavin Bryars falls under no category. It is mongrel, full of sensuality and wit and is deeply moving. He is one of the few composers who can put slapstick and primal emotion alongside each other. He allows you to witness new wonders in the sounds around you by approaching them from a completely new angle. With a third ear maybe.
Countless people have attempted to define the absolute power of the world of nature. Some praise it as god, some call it the Buddha, others call it truth. Still others convert nature into a philosophy by which they attempt to sound its deepest truth. Such attempts to define the power of nature are no more than striving to escape its effects.
The latest trend seems to be these DJs doing pre-recorded sets, in perfect pitch with the lights & acts on stage. Everything is centred around the action from the stage. It doesn't even demand action coming from the crowd! Passive consumerism or something. Mayhem with an overwhelming sound that isn't actually good music. More like diarrhoea.
Wile E. Coyote is a coyote with nothing but good intentions. But Road Runner comes along and is unattainable, he wants it and can't get it, and thus he becomes a villain that is impossible to be around. Bill O'Reilly is a villain that is so in love with himself and the sound of his voice that he's literally become the personification of evil.
Sonnymoon and Quadrants are a couple of bands that really inspire me in terms of the melodics of things and certain tones and just what feels good. It takes me back to the type of music that I grew up on in my household. We played a lot of gangsta rap, but we also played a lot of oldies, and I think that mix is part of what inspires my sound.
I would say just start writing. You've got to write every day. Copy someone that you like if you think that perhaps could become your sound, too. I did that with Hemingway, and I thought I was writing just like Hemingway. Then all of a sudden it occurred to me - he didn't have a sense of humor. I don't know anything he's written that's funny.
For me the noise of Time is not sad: I love bells, clocks, watches — and I recall that at first photographic implements were related to techniques of cabinetmaking and the machinery of precision: cameras, in short, were clocks for seeing, and perhaps in me someone very old still hears in the photographic mechanism the living sound of the wood.
Whether it is a garden gnome, the sound of Bing Crosby launching into 'White Christmas', the blinking innocent eyes of Bambi or the words of Patience Strong, the kitsch phenomenon is there as strong and recognisable as your mother's face. You seldom if ever have the question, whether this is kitsch or not. If you think it might be, then it is.
You don't know what someone's going to walk away from a movie with, but you hope it's something positive, but if nothing, you want them most basically to be entertained and engaged. That's your job. But you also hope to give them something to chew on or maybe some insight into the human existence, you hope a little bit. Not to sound too lofty.
Who is my biggest inspiration? Wow... I really, without wanting to sound 'aw gee shucks,' I'd have to say my wife who taught a rather uptight Englishman what there is to be got out of life. Susan is my greatest inspiration. She has more integrity than anyone I know, and integrity is more important than anything for a happy and successful life.
My imagination? No, I don't think it's VIVID at all. On the contrary, it's not nearly potent enough. My poor imaginative faculties have always needed...extentions. That's why I'm here with you. You're smiling again, or rather you're SMIRKING. Funny word, smirk. Rather like an extraterrestrial surname. Simon Smirk. How do you think that sounds?
Making the logo twice the size is often a good thing to do, because most advertisements are deficient in brand identification. Showing the clients' faces is also a better stratagem than it may sound, because the public is more interested in personalities than in corporations. Some clients can be projected as human symbols of their own products.
Darren Campbell, the British Olympic sprinter, was my sprint coach at Middlesbrough - yet the best advice he gave me was to slow down. That might sound strange but he said: 'You have too much speed - you don't always need to run at 100 per cent.' I was used to running flat out every time, but he told me, 'You know how quick you are, slow down.'
It doesn't sound that cool to say it, but I still get nervous for any show. But it's different degrees - playing a small basement of a club versus playing a festival like Firefly or Bonnaroo. The feeling is, 'Crap, I'm about to be blasted in the face,' and once you get started, then it's like, 'OK, I've done this before. I know what I'm doing.'
I was pillaging a lot of music that had nothing to do with guitar playing, using a lot of strange tunings and voicings and chord structures that aren't really that natural to the guitar; I ended up developing a harmonic palette that's not particularly natural to the guitar because I was always trying to make my guitar sound like something else.
The importance of language in gaining knowledge is doubtless the chief cause of the common notion that knowledge may be passed directly from one to another. It almost seems as if all we have to do to convey an idea into the mind of another is to convey a sound into his ear. Thus imparting knowledge gets assimilated to a purely physical process.
Sometimes people ask me, 'You do stand-up?' I try explaining what I do, and I don't think they really get it. So: 'Yeah, I do stand-up.' I wish there was one word to express what I do - that way, I don't sound arrogant. Whenever I say I'm a performer, people think I'm a performance artist: 'She paints herself white and pretends to be a flower.'
I love a great melody and wonderful lyrics that speak from the heart, and my music has that and speaks about it; but there's just something that was really raw and energetic about the early House music. It's hard to describe. It's like you had to go to these parties where the stuff was being played on these huge sound systems to really feel it.
The poor man who takes property by force is called a thief, but the creditor who can by legislation make a debtor pay a dollar twice as large as he borrowed is lauded as the friend of a sound currency. The man who wants the people to destroy the Government is an anarchist, but the man who wants the Government to destroy the people is a patriot.
Seek out some retired and old-world spot, far from the madding crowd, and dream away a sunny week among its drowsy lanes - some half-forgotten nook, hidden away by the fairies, out of reach of the noisy world - some quaint-perched eyrie on the cliffs of Time, from whence the surging waves of the nineteenth century would sound far-off and faint.
At the beginning of a novel, a writer needs confidence, but after that what's required is persistence. These traits sound similar. They aren't. Confidence is what politicians, seducers and currency speculators have, but persistence is a quality found in termites. It's the blind drive to keep on working that persists after confidence breaks down.
Music isn't seeking to comment on the experience or transmit some finding about it - it is only seeking to express it. The vicarious experience is much more accessible. We all recognize the sound of that howling, because we all have a similar howling inside of us, however we heed it or hold it or muzzle it or repress it or live in bondage to it.
Whether a listener absorbs this music or rebels against it is at least partly a matter of how the performers put it across. It would be hard to imagine an ensemble playing it with greater virtuosity than the JACK Quartet, which seemed not merely earnest but also completely comfortable with, and passionate about, the strange sound worlds at hand.
The act of surrendering sort of puts me in a different mindset that allows me to be more of a channel - because I'm not holding on so tightly to things, I'm letting go, and I find that in letting go I become more of a channel for life to really happen on life's terms. I mean, maybe that sounds sort of metaphysical, but that's honestly how I feel.
The thing that amazes me about getting fired is that nobody ever has anything insightful to say about it. They always say the same thing. They always say, 'Everything happens for a reason.' As lame as that sounds, I guess it’s better to hear it out loud. Because when you hear it in your own head, it sounds like, 'Anything can happen with a razor.