Long live teachers of children, because they can show children how they can save the world.
Pete SeegerRead
Songwriters can’t explain. You get an idea and you don’t know where it’s come from. And if you’re lucky, you have a pencil or pen and can write it down.
Interpretation
Songwriters often create without understanding the source of their inspiration, relying on intuition to capture their ideas.
In this quote, Pete Seeger reflects on the mysterious nature of creativity in songwriting, emphasizing that inspiration can strike unexpectedly and may not always be easily explained. He suggests that the ability to write down these fleeting ideas, when they arise, is crucial for songwriters, as it captures the essence of their creative spark before it fades away.
In practice
A music teacher might use this quote to inspire students about the nature of creativity in songwriting during a class.
Long live teachers of children, because they can show children how they can save the world.
According to my definition of God, I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes, I'm looking at God. Whenever I'm listening to something, I'm listening to God.
Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.
Well, normally I’m against big things. I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things. Too many things can go wrong when they get big.” — Pete Seeger (on how he felt about attending his big 90th birthday bash last year)
I’ve never sung anywhere without giving the people listening to me a chance to join in - as a kid, as a lefty, as a man touring the U.S.A. and the world, as an oldster. I guess it’s kind of a religion with me. Participation. That’s what’s going to save the human race.
I write a song because I want to. I think the moment you start writing it to make money, you're starting to kill yourself artistically.
Racist writing is a craft failure.
The eye speaks with an eloquence and truthfulness surpassing speech. It is the window out of which the winged thoughts often fly unwittingly. It is the tiny magic mirror on whose crystal surface the moods of feeling fitfully play, like the sunlight and shadow on a still stream.
To finish is sadness to a writer — a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.
Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater.
Whoever has the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. Because a character will never die! A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die!
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
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