I've listened with intense emotion to the waves of the sea, to the mountain torrents and waterfalls, and to all the sound made by water and wind. And I would add that I make no distinction between noise and sound, for me, all this represents music.

-- Olivier Messiaen

(in Divine Sparks: Collected Wisdom of the Heart,

edited by Karen Speerstra)

Don't worry about saving these songs!

And if one of our instruments breaks,

it doesn't matter.

We have fallen into the place

where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes

rise into the atmosphere,

and even if the whole world's harp

should burn up, there will still be

hidden instruments playing.

-- Rumi

(from The Essential Rumi,

translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne)

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

-- Henry David Thoreau

(in Notations: Quotations on Music,

edited by Sallye Leventhal)

We are the music-makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams;

World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world for ever, it seems.

-- Arthur O'Shaughnessy