From Music Smarts by Dr. Bonzai:

I don't think it's something you should get into for the money. You should get into it because you just love to do it. (Dr.John)

I don't think true musicians, actors, and artists have any choice. (k.d. Lang)

[…since creation of music…] You immerse yourself in the energy of the universe and pluck your note. (Ray Manzarek)

[…] And no time I've spent playing will ever be wasted. It's good for you. It's like food. (Leo Kottke)

The feeling of playing this [jazz] music is like getting high. (Ray Benson)

[…] what they all have in common is that they deal with whatever is happening in their world in a very immediate, spontaneous, and creative way. (Pat Metheny)

Duke Ellington showed me that it was okay to be fanatical about my work. (Bruce Swedien)

My heroes […] inspire me to do crazy things. (Brian BT Transeau)

Weird Al speaks about Dr Demento radio show (Spike Jones, Stan Freberg, Tom Lehrer, Allen Sherman, Ray Stevens

I realized at one point that all of my favorite sci-fi movies had the same film composer, Bernard Herrmann. (Danny Elfman)

Before the electric guitar was cranked up, the trumpet player was the guitar player of yesteryear. He got all the women, too. (Herb Alpert)

Some of the hardest classical pieces to play are slow movements in a sonata or symphony, Everything is exposed - your phrasing, your breath control, your intonation - and you can't hide behind anything. (Paul Horn)

The electric guitar is the first heavily processed musical instrument - the first synthesizer. It can provide so many elements and still have that human sensitivity. (Danny Kortchmar)

I always loved the fact that a good bass line with the melody line can work incredibly well for an audience. They may not know why, but it really makes the difference, and it carries the groove. (Phil Ramone)

Jimi was about staying open-minded and letting the sounds take you on a journey. (Eddy Kramer)

It isn't always how much you play, but how much you don't play. Rick Danko used to say « I don't play bass; I play space. » (Eddy Offord)

Listening is the biggest part of playing music. (Jim Keltner)

When I play I get absorbed in the music so that I'm lost, almost in a trance, but still aware. I want the music to come through me in a very open, clear way, as if I am a channel. (Paul Horn)

What I've seen as a producer is a small handful of guys like Keith Richards, Willie Nelson, and Bob Dylan, who know how to let go and play in the moment, and not think about it. They lose musical self-consciousness. (Don Was)

You are the one who knows if what you tried to play came out or not. That's jazz. (Toots Thielemans)

[…] the work starts to speak to you, often taking you off in a direction you didn't expect. (Lindsey Buckingham)

People are the same all over the world. There may be religious, cultural, philosophical, and racial barriers, but they are transcended when you get up and play some music. (Paul Horn)

I find that you have to attack the audience, sometimes — do a pre-emptive strike and get to the audience's airfields before they can start throwing tomatoes at you. (Richard Thompson)

My background has been: any elements can be juggled, any elements can be collaged, edited, juxtaposed, to come up with something new. (Thomas Dolby)

Whenever young guys ask me what they should do to get better, I always say, try to be the worst guy in whatever band you're in. That's the secret. (Pat Metheny)

I was under the impression that “creation” of music is all there is. [Then] I began to see “selection” as the other complementary principle to coming up with something […] (Paul Haslinger)

We have moved into an age of sophisticated sound. With digital recording, everything must be perfect. But you still must have the feeling of a human presence in the music. (Maurice Jarre)

I think that the simplicity of an image or of a sound is hard to make. It means the artist has to throw a lot away, and just use the most important and the strongest things. (Laurie Anderson)

What I am talking about in my music is the attempt to get into a state of improvisation every night. That means you start out with things you know […] and you try to go from those into areas where you've never been before (Mose Allison)

When you read music there is a part of your brain that shuts down. It's like coloring within the lines. You don't take off. What a coloring book does is completely kill creativity. (David Lynch)

Be an innovator and not a follower. Don't be afraid to step away from what everybody else is doing. Satisfy yourself. (Steve Lukather)

When you are writing with someone, you not only have a partner - you have an audience for your ideas. (Walter Becker)

There's no way to collaborate unless the two people are willing to let go of an awful lot of ego and pride. All that has to go out the window. (Jimmy Webb)

Sometimes you start a set out, and for no reason that you can figure out or predict, everytthing starts clicking right away. It's as if it's happening of its own accord. You have control, but you are not forcing anything. I call it the “Spime”, my word for space-time. When you get into the Spime, that's when you feel the flow of things, and there is no effort involved. It just happens. (Mose Allison)

In a great many records made by hit artists, the drums play a huge part in whether they become hits, because of the way it feels when it comes over that little speaker. Generally, the first thing that a person feels is the way the drummer has constructed the heartbeat of the song. (Jim Keltner)

A good song badly produced is still a good song. (Jon Brion)

If you do our job exceptionally well, nobody notices. Because what they hear matches what they see. They take it for granted. But if you don't pull it off, the sound can take you out of the story. (John Neff about scoring)

I try to create rhythmic oppositions between music and images - counter point. I think people are capable of absorbing a lot of time signatures simultaneously. (Laurie Anderson)

We must have people who have an impeccable, flawless knowledge of the technology, but there will be no progress unless there are also people with strange ideas. (Roger lagadec)

Solutions don't appear miraculously. They are the result of a lot of hard work, a lot of burning the midnight oil, and a lot of intense frustration from doing it the wrong way until you find the right way. (Rupert Neve)

Music and technology are intertwined. Like adouble helix, this DNA of music and technology cannot be separated. You ignore it at your peril as a musician. (Glen Ballard)

I have always been interested in the notion that if you wanted to release what you have done to the entire warld, you could just do it. Now we have the technology to do so. (Jon Brion)

There are sound effects, and there are sounds that bridge the gap between sound effects and music. (David Lynch)

I believe that there is a responsibility for any artist who takes from other cultures to help to promote the artists and the music that they are in turn inspired by. (Peter Gabriel)

You have to feel within yourself that you have something to offer. If you don't feel that you really have something that you need to say, then you should try another profession. (Suzanne Vega)

I've always believed that age is a state of mind. We age ourselves only in the ways that our spirit is aged. The meat may decay, but the spirit never will. As long as we keep some focus on the spirit, we're doin' alright. (Dr. John)