Billy Joel Quotes

I'm a piano player. I never thought of myself as a singer, at all. I was always trying to sound like somebody else. I don't like my own voice, I like Ray Charles, Robert Plant, I like Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, people that have an edge in their voice.

I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14 - to meet women.

I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. What I do, in my opinion, is by no means extraordinary.

In every heart there is a room, a sanctuary safe and strong, to heal the wounds from lovers past, until a new one comes along... So I would choose to be with you. That's if the choice were mine to make. But you can make decisions too. And you can have this heart to break. And so it goes, and so it goes. And you're the only one who knows.

Move to California - my first impression of the Wild West.

If you are not doing what you love, you are wasting your time.

I am, as I've said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary.

I run into people from the Lehigh Valley and Allentown all over the world, and they're obviously doing pretty well. They say, "Oh, it's pretty nice there now and there's a lot of new businesses that have come into the area." Nobody's telling me, "Yeah, I left." Everybody says, "You know, I'm there. It's great. It's really nice there, and you made our town famous."

I've crashed my car three times.

There's nothing better than good sex. But bad sex? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is better than bad sex.

Have you listened to the radio lately? Have you heard the canned, frozen and processed product being dished up to the world as American popular music today?

I would not leave you in your times of trouble. We never could have come this far. I took the good times, I'll take the bad times, I'll take you just the way you are.

Why do musicians give so much time to charitable causes? The most humanitarian cause that we can give our time to is the creation and performance of music itself.

If it seems like I've been lost in 'lets remember', If it seems I'm gettin' older and missin' my younger days, well you shoulda known me much better, cause the past is something that never got in my way.

What if she figures out you're not very smart?

Say goodbye to the oldies, but goodies, because the good old days weren't always good and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems

Some people stay away from the door for the chance of it opening up.

Davey Crocket, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland.

And you know that when the truth is told that you can get what you want or you can just get old.

If you tell kids they can't have something, that's what they want.

Advice is cheap; you can take it from me.

Call me a joker, call me a fool, right at this moment I'm totally cool.

I'm in a New York state of mind

We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it But we tried to fight it

There's a deep-seated paranoia that Americans have about not being Americans or something.

I see the winos talking to themselves and I can understand.

Historically, musicians know what it is like to be outside the norm - walking the high wire without a safety net. Our experience is not so different from those who march to the beat of different drummers.

If you could only hear what I dream.

No end to sorrow, caused by the same endless fears. Why can't we learn from all we've been through after two thousand years?

We drown our doubts in dry champagne and soothe our souls with fine cocaine. I don't know why I even care, we get so high and get nowhere.

Streetlife serenader never sang on stages, needs no orchestration, melody comes easy, need no vast arrangement to do their harmonizing.

I am no longer afraid of becoming lost, because the journey back always reveals something new, and that is ultimately good for the artist.

I always wanted to try to be a teacher even before I was in the music business. I liked history, and good teachers made an impact on me.

Most people you'd tell "I'm gonna be a musician," they'd say, "you're crazy, you're gonna starve, you're gonna be poor, a drug addict, go to jail, you'll never make it, there's too much competition, it's a terrible business," etc. But my chorus teacher in high school said, "you've got what it takes to be a really good professional musician, you should consider it." That was an epiphany for me. So I thought, well, maybe I can help somebody, too.

Though you can see when you're wrong, you know you can't always see when you're right.

If you're a very unfulfilled person you might have a tendency to turn to crime.

Artist - musicians, painters, writers, poets, always seem to have had the most accurate perception of what is really going on around them, not the official version or the popular perception of contemporary life.

I believe there is a time for meditation in cathedrals of our own.

I always thought of myself as the piano player in the band. That, I suppose, I'm confident about, and I guess my songwriting developed as I went along and I got a certain amount of confidence in that. The songs are like my kids, I'm proud of all of them for one reason or another.

I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.

I compare songwriting to childbirth. How many kids can you have before your uterus explodes?

You can speak your mind But not on my time.

you may be right, I may be crazy, but it just might be a lunatic you're looking for

You should never argue with a crazy mind, you ought to know my now.

Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes; I'm afraid it's time for goodbye again

Musicians want to be the loud voice for so many quiet hearts.

A typical day in the life of a heavy metal musician consists of a round of golf and an AA meeting.

It should be easy for a man who's strong to say he's sorry or admit when he's wrong.