Van Morrison Quotes

I like [George] Benson because I just like it. I like that kind of style. I don't like the broken up kind of style. I don't like where you play for 16 bars and then break it up into what somebody's version of what birds twittering sounds like, or what the sound of the city is, or what New York sounds like.

I'd been performing in bands since I was 12 which represented, at that point, about 16 years of playing music.

Basically I got an insight into what it really was through Alcoholics Anonymous. One day the switchboard lit up and I saw where it was all going. I saw what alcohol could do to people and I saw that it wasn't a good thing anymore. Plus I wasn't a teenager anymore myself.

My experiences with dope were not good for me. I had to go another route. Because in my experience, dope didn't give me those insights.

The Eternal Kansas City song came from a dream sequence. It was actually kind of weird. I had this dream about a Kansas City type of thing while I was up at Stevie Winwood's place near Cheltenham, in Britain. I went into this small town and I was walking along and this dream thing was still in my head.

The theory is that you don't play a song the same way twice because it's jazz. That's where I'm coming from.

I like to see people reaching back for the roots and for the reason why. Not intellectually, but just for the gut feeling of what it's all about.

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

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

I don't think nostalgia has to be negative.

It's all complete instinct and intuition, and that's extremely difficult to teach.

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

Have I told you lately that I love you, have I told you lately there's no one above you. Fill my heart with gladness, take away all my sadness, ease my troubles, that's what you do.

What I like is natural music. It's like I was born with a gift to do something naturally, which I have no choice but to followup on.

Spiritual hunger and spiritual thirst But you got to change it On the inside first To be satisfied

[Touring] is not necessarily a priority. It's just a part of who I am as a performer. That's obviously why I'm doing it; why I'm in this business is part of me has to perform.

I realized that what I was looking for was doing collaborations with other people - people who can play a ballad, rock, jazz. I was looking for more co-op type things than what I had been doing, which had been completely my own trip.

What was happening with me, with the album [A Period of Transition], with the people who took the pictures, the record company, everything, getting a new manager [Harvey Goldsmith]-it was all saying a period of transition to me so that was the title choice. It says what it is and obviously nobody is going to analyze that. It's exactly what it is.

I realized I was growing up or something like that. You have responsibilities...you've got to think about getting your act together. I didn't even know what it had been doing to me. I didn't realize how dangerous it was. People talked in terms of drugs and I used to think in terms of...well in Ireland, everybody drinks. Nobody gives it a second thought. You're Irish number one and you're a drinker number two. That's the first two things about us Irish.

If I ventured in the slipstream between the viaducts of your dreams, where immobile steel rims crack and the ditch in the back roads stop. Could you find me?

The music I really like to get off on is the old rhythm 'n' blues and rock 'n' roll stuff... that's what I really dig. And I also dig to sing ballads as well. And I also dig writing my own songs. I was just trying to find a way of integrating the whole thing, taking a look at the total picture.

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.

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

I think we're going a bit too fast at the minute. The rate we're going is like we're going over the edge of the hill.

It's the emotion...each word has got a connotation and symbolism and the thing is finding what's behind the word-what meaning it has and what emotion. I'm really into vocal repetition as a definite art form.

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

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

Skiffle was blues featuring a washboard and acoustic instruments. It encompassed blues, with elements of folk, jazz, and, at times, American country-and-western music.

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

When you start to analyze [rock 'n' roll], it's only because you don't understand it. You're just not connecting with it once you have to start analyzing it.

Like I said, basically I'm a rocker. That's about it. Things that I've done away from that-branches that I've gotten into off of that - are just other streams, other things that I can do.

Shivers up and down my spine It's a feeling so divine Let me go back for a while Got to go back for a while To that magic time.

Everybody's got their own particular vision which is a personal thing.

There's quite a few people getting into that - new acts coming along that are using a lot of stuff that happened in the 50s and 60s. They're completely ignoring the 70s which is kind of a turn on because to me nothing has really gone down in the 70s.

I'm very lucky, I'm happy with life because my experiences led me to do what I had to do. I don't have any regrets whatsoever.

Once in a blue moon someone like you comes along.

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

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

These are the days of the endless summer, these are the days, the time is now. There is no past, there's only future, there's only here, there's only now.

It's not that big a mystery about types. It's not even that big a mystery why so many people are picking up on things now. It's like we were talking about the primitive thing before and all that. Nothing has really changed much. The things that have changed are like we're on the noon now. There are more buildings now. But we're still basically two monkeys sitting here.

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

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

That song [You Got To Make It Through The World] came from a vibe I picked up from an old blues singer named Bo Carter. My lady was making a film as a thesis for U.C.L.A. and she wanted me to write a song to depict this character. The movie had something to do with bootlegging and stuff like that. I found this Bo Carter record and he was just saying something about making it to the woods or something like that.

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.

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

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

Going down the old mine with a transistor radio.

We might think that we're really intellectual and we're going to check out the library to research the meaning every time somebody puts out a new record. It's still primitive stuff. It's the same now as it was at the beginning. It's no different now. Rock 'n' roll is spirit music-it's just coming through people.