Van Morrison Quotes

I educated myself. To me, school was boring.

The point of jazz is, you do something and then you go on.

In deep confusion, in great despair, when I reach out for him, he is there. When I am lonely as I can be, then I know God shines his light on me.

Music is spiritual. The music business is not.

I deliberately try not to cater for the commercial market, so I can't see myself in competition, you know, with second or third generation rock stars.

Love of the simple is all that I need, I've no time for schism or lovers of greed.

Enlightenment, don't know what it is. It's up to you, the way you think.

Every performance is different. That's the beauty of it.

Meet them halfway with love, peace, and persuasion, and expect them to rise for the occasion.

Into the Music was about the first album where I felt, 'I'm starting here' ... the Wavelength thing, I didn't really feel that was me.

You gotta fight every day to keep mediocrity at bay ...

As a developing musician, skiffle became a platform for me to start playing music.

I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. That's what I do. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it.

Memories, how they linger in the twilight and in the wee small hours sometimes just before dawn.

I'd love to live in Ireland but I'd like to live as me, not what someone thinks I am. People don't understand - I lived there before I was famous.

A lot of people who were writing when I came through originally as a singer-songwriter have disappeared.

I'm a working man in my prime cleaning windows.

When I started you were more in touch with the people you were playing to. There wasn't the distance or the separation that there is now.

No guru, no method, no teacher, just you and I and nature, and the father in the garden.

I never bought the commercial thing, at any stage of the game.

The fog of illusion, the fog of confusion is hanging all over the world.

Going down the old mine with a transistor radio.

When the spirit moves me, I can do many wondrous things.

Sometimes, when the spirit moves me I can do many wondrous things I wanna know when the spirit moves you Did ye get healed?

You can't stop us on the road to freedom, you can't stop us cause our eyes can see.

When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration.

If it's what you do and you can do it, then you do it.

If you never hear from me that just means I would rather not.

Men come, men go, all things remain in God.

I never, ever said that I was a nice guy.

Someone once described me as a maverick and that's what I would say. I'm a maverick not by choice but by conviction.

I just need somewhere to dump all my negativity.

There is no black-and-white situation. It's all part of life. Highs, lows, middles.

I never paid attention to what was contemporary or what was commercial, it didn't mean anything to me.

My records do not require a lot of thought of 'What is this?' and 'What is that?' That would be too contrived for me.

If my heart could do my thinking, would my brain begin to feel?

I'm a dweller of the threshold and I'm waiting at the door, and I'm standing in the darkness, I don't want to wait no more.

A famous person to themselves, they don't get up in the morning and think, I'm famous. I'm not famous to me. Famous is a perception.

I had my eyes closed in the dark, I sighed a million sighs, I told a million lies, to myself, to myself.

Jackie Wilson said it was Reet-Petite, kind of love you got knock me off my feet.

Go up to the mountain, go up to the glen, where silence will touch you, and heartbreak will mend.

Hearing the blues changed my life.

Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag.

I don't think nostalgia has to be negative.

If you live the life you love, you get the blessing from above.

Common one, my illuminated one, oh my high in the art of suffering. Take a walk with me.

I write songs. Then, I record them. And, later, maybe I perform them on stage. That's what I do. That's my job. Simple.

Sartre said that hell is other people, I believe that most of them are

Enlightenment says the world is nothing Nothing but a dream, everything's an illusion And nothing is real.

Once in a blue moon someone like you comes along.

I do see value in music criticism. Most of the criticism I have received over the years has been very good.

You can't stay the same. If you're a musician and a singer, you have to change, that's the way it works.

The first piece of music that captured my imagination was probably Ray Charles Live At Newport.

From the dark end of the street - To the bright side of the road - We'll be lovers once again on the - Bright side of the road

You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense.

I went back to Belfast and started a club, the Maritime. No one had thought about doing a blues club, so I was the first.

Smell the sea and feel the sky.

Let your soul and spirit fly.

Hark, now hear the sailors cry, smell the sea, and feel the sky let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic ...

I shall drive my chariot down your street and cry hey it's me.

You learn to read the audiences after a while, and there are all different kinds of gigs.

You have to understand a bit about the poetry of the blues to know where the references are coming from.

The way I was singing the songs was jazz

In the gentle evening freeze, by the whispering shady trees I will find sanctuary in the Lord.

This Hollywood ain't no good, I would rather be like Robin Hood.

Way across the country where the hillside mountains glide, the dynamo of your smile caressed the barefoot virgin child.

I think Paul McGuinness and U2 created the Irish music industry. It certainly wasn't there before that.

The future is keeping you out of the present time.

I've got love in my life, as well as trouble and strife.

Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat.

Even today, skiffle is a defining part of my music. If I get the opportunity to just have a jam, skiffle is what I love to play.

You've got to separate the singer and the songs.

If you're a pop singer, you don't need to evolve. You just get a set together, have some hit songs and play them over and over.

The blues - there's no black and white - it's the truth.

I have seen without perceiving I have been another man Let me pierce the realm of glamour So I know just what I am.

And I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
And magnificently we will fold into the mystic

Become enraptured by the sights and sounds in intrigue of nature and beauty, come along with me and take it all in. Come here my love.

Making love in the green grass behind the stadium with you my brown eyed girl.

Let me purify my thoughts and words and deeds that I may be a vehicle for thee.

A fantabulous night to make romance.

You come into my dreams from a whisper to a scream.

Large audiences did not suit my low-key approach.

The wild night is calling.

I've never felt like I was born with a silver spoon at all, although I've felt like howling at the moon a lot of times!

I'm not a rock singer and I don't want to be a rock singer. I'm not interested. It doesn't seem to get across.

I understood jazz, I understood how it worked. That's what I apply to everything.

When heart is open, you will change just like a flower slowly opening.

I learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice.

Illusions and pipe dreams on the one hand
And straight reality is always cold

When I think of that dear rugged cross where the dear Saviour gave his all ... When I feel like I'm on my last go round, see me through.

Singing is my profession - there is no plan B.

At the end of the day, we should give thanks and pray, to the one, to the one.

It was really strange for me when I started to play concerts in America where the audiences were all sitting down.

It's a marvelous night for a moondance!

These days politics, religion, media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over.

It will make you feel good, and it will make you feel whole, when the spirit moves you and it fills you through and through.

I am about the arrangements and the layers of depth in the music.

There's always got to be a struggle. What else is there? That's what life is made of. I don't know anything else. If there is, tell me about it.

I always record far more than I can use. There's probably twice as much recorded as comes out.

Laying underneath the stars Can be so much fun Especially when you're feeling good When you're with the one you love.