If you make music for the human needs you have within yourself, then you do it for all humans who need the same things.
BILLY JOELMost 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.
More Billy Joel Quotes
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I had a melody and a rhythm and chords, but nothing to talk about.
BILLY JOEL -
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
BILLY JOEL -
There was an edge of, ‘Go away kid, you’re bothering me’. I’ve kicked myself a million times since. I could’ve discovered Whitney Houston.
BILLY JOEL -
You can walk away from your mistakes You can turn your back on what you do Just a little smile is all it takes And you can have your cake and eat it too.
BILLY JOEL -
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.
BILLY JOEL -
I have to thank my mother for paying for the piano lessons for all those years.
BILLY JOEL -
Hope you don’t think this is Billy Joel unplugged. I’m a piano player. I’m already unplugged.
BILLY JOEL -
You enrich humanity with the profound expression of these feelings. … My songs are like my kids.
BILLY JOEL -
Honesty is the best part of any art form. If you don’t have that, you’re kidding yourself and your listener.
BILLY JOEL -
I’ve passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage. I found that just surviving was a noble fight.
BILLY JOEL -
Only the good die young.
BILLY JOEL -
I don’t know why people thought I was retiring.
BILLY JOEL -
Don’t make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money.
BILLY JOEL -
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.
BILLY JOEL -
I see the winos talking to themselves and I can understand.
BILLY JOEL -
Rock and roll cola wars, I can’t take it any more.
BILLY JOEL -
Sometimes that’s what it takes. You’re only human, you’re allowed to make your share of mistakes.
BILLY JOEL -
You may be wrong, but you may be right.
BILLY JOEL -
I’ve tried to avoid that all my life. When I wrote about soldiers in Vietnam, I wasn’t trying to make a political statement. I was trying to write about how screwed things were for soldiers, and how they still are.
BILLY JOEL -
We’re on the verge of all things new.
BILLY JOEL -
I’ve lived long enough to have learned, the closer you get to the fire, the more you get burned.
BILLY JOEL -
There ain’t much future for a man who works the sea, there ain’t no island left for islanders like me.
BILLY JOEL -
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 Don’t go trying some new fashion Don’t change the color of your hair. […] I could not love you any better I love you just the way you are.
BILLY JOEL -
You may never understand How the stranger is inspired For he is not always evil, And he is not always wrong.
BILLY JOEL -
She’ll carelessly cut you and laugh while you’re bleeding.
BILLY JOEL -
Musicians want to be the loud voice for so many quiet hearts.
BILLY JOEL