Van Morrison Quotes

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.

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

I have to accept the fact that I was putting out records that reviewers were going to get an image from.

What I really like to do is just do the twist!

There's no difference between lyrics and poetry. Words are words. The only difference is the people who are in academic positions and call themselves poets and have an academic stance. They've got something to lose if they say it's all poetry; if there's not music to it, and you have to wear a certain kind of checkered shirt or something like that. It's all the same. Lyrics are lyrics, poetry is poetry, lyrics are poetry, and poetry is lyrics. They are interchangeable to me.

[Jazz musicians] couldn't cut rock. I had to be more limited and specific about what I was doing.

You are who you are. It doesn't make any point to go out and buy the Top 40 albums to see what those acts are doing. There's no point in hearing what's going on. The only thing that's going on is what's been going forever. It's just that some people dig that bag and some people dig the other bag.

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

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

[The music is about ] for the purpose of getting people to an excitement level. They feel something, they feel emotions. They're going to go home after that concert and remember it.Maybe they got something out of the experience rather than intellectualizing about what songs mean which is the whole head trip.

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

If you're with a good band and everybody's from the old school, it's different. When you're in your element, you're in your element and things just come. You don't have to drag them out or force them out. They just happen.

There aren't any labels - all jazz means is improvization and you can never play a tune the same way twice. So jazz spills over into everything.

Large audiences did not suit my low-key approach.

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.

It's real difficult to pin down directions. I just want to do collaboration-tape stuff.

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

[You Got To Make It Through The World] it's kind of a survival song. Survival is what's happening and it's basically a song about that.

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

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.

Jazz goes into folk music, into rock music. Jazz is in practically everything except classical music where they're reading the same music all the time, the same way, the same tempo every night.

I can see more naturalness in basic blues, basic R & B, basic rock 'n' roll.

I'd come to the point where I wasn't really putting out creatively. I didn't seem to have anything to say in that period of time after the '74 tour. There was nothing definite that I wanted to record.

It's the same thing as a primitive of Africans, Indians, nomads or whatever - when they start getting up and doing their ritual and doing the dance, it's just what's coming through. It's the spirit. Rock 'n' roll is still primitive.

Singing is my profession - there is no plan B.

It was like I had evolved to a certain stage where I was stuck in this songwriter bag as an image. But basically at heart, I'm a rocker. And I still am. But I was caught up in the singer/songwriter bag and I wasn't really enjoying it.

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.

Whether you're writing a book or a song or whatever, you've got to be involved in it. It's got to come from the heart I think...that's what it's all about.

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

I don't like to condemn people because what that means is that you're only condemning yourself about a part of you that you can't stand.

I've been in America for almost ten years. I've had many parts of the American experience. I've been all over this country and seen many different parts of it. It's just that I'm not an American. I've never become an American. I'm talking about the whole thing-psychologically, citizenship, the whole trip. Of course I've definitely been influenced by America-I'm definitely influenced by the music and the culture.

[Rock 'n' roll] music started out with some cat banging a log with a couple of pieces of stick. He sent a message across a river and although the cat on the other side receiving the message didn't know the exact words, he did understand basically something about what was being communicated.

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

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

There's novel reading, and then there's the other kind of reading. Take somebody like Carl Jung, the psychiatrist - now there's somebody worth getting into. With novels, I'm kind of fly by night. It isn't something I can be really consistent with.

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

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

Jazz was always cool. That was what I liked about jazz - it was always cool. Now I see the cats that were basically cool getting kind of uncool. So that ruins what I feel about jazz.

What I don't like is taking it to extremes and making all these intellectualizations about what basically is simple music. It's simple stream-of-consciousness stuff in my songs. What I'm trying to get across is misinterpreted.

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

I'm still basically the same as I always was. I still listen to the same people. That's where I'm coming from.

When I first started drinking, it was working for me. It was great. Like when you're doing a gig and you're in a band and you're in the truck and there's nothing to do in the truck and the gigs are all the same and the hotels are all the same...it's the hotels, the car, the gig.

If you want to put your rock 'n' roll into mythology, [A Period of Transition] is from the Daddy Cool school.

I thought of collaborating with other people which still might happen at this point. It might not. I was just trying to break the cycle because I had gotten to a point where I was definitely sure that I was on the wrong track after about 16 years.

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

I was like one of those newspapers, those periodicals. There's all different kinds of alcoholics. There's the everyday kind: that's the consistent one. That's what people think an alcoholic is-but an alcoholic is basically just someone who's allergic to alcohol. That's all it means. It's just an allergy.

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

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.