The Best Van Morrison quotes

If the spirit comes through in a Madame George type of song, that’s what the spirit says. You have very little to do with it. You’re like an instrument for what’s coming through. — Van Morrison

Let your soul and spirit fly. — Van Morrison

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

Sometimes, when the spirit moves me I can do many wondrous things I wanna know when the spirit moves you Did ye get healed? — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

Hark, now hear the sailors cry, Smell the sea, and feel the sky, Let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic.–Into the Mystic — Van Morrison

Once in a blue moon someone like you comes along. — Van Morrison

The blues–there’s no black and white–it’s the truth. — Van Morrison

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

I’ve always listened to jazz or folk or blues. I was always listening to the prophets. I don’t really go for…I don’t know how to say anything about the singles scene without slamming people. — Van Morrison

I went back to Belfast and started a club, the Maritime. No one had thought about doing a blues club, so I was the first. — Van Morrison

If you get into introspective blues or something where you’re stretching out a bit, large audiences don’t respond to this, so you have to give them what they want, basically. — Van Morrison

Hearing the blues changed my life. — Van Morrison

Jackie Wilson said it was Reet–Petite, kind of love you got knock me off my feet. — Van Morrison

I’d love to live in Ireland but I’d like to live as me, not what someone thinks I am. People don’t understand–I lived there before I was famous. — Van Morrison

I’ve got love in my life, as well as trouble and strife. — Van Morrison

Even today, skiffle is a defining part of my music. If I get the opportunity to just have a jam, skiffle is what I love to play. — Van Morrison

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

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

Laying underneath the stars Can be so much fun Especially when you’re feeling good When you’re with the one you love. — Van Morrison

Become enraptured by the sights and sounds in intrigue of nature and beauty, come along with me and take it all in. Come here my love. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

Making love in the green grass behind the stadium with you my brown eyed girl. — Van Morrison

A fantabulous night to make romance. — Van Morrison

Music is spiritual. The music business is not. — Van Morrison

I just like any music to swing, no matter what it is. — Van Morrison

I am about the arrangements and the layers of depth in the music. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

The first piece of music that captured my imagination was probably Ray Charles Live At Newport. — Van Morrison

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

I think Paul McGuinness and U2 created the Irish music industry. It certainly wasn’t there before that. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat. — Van Morrison

As a developing musician, skiffle became a platform for me to start playing music. — Van Morrison

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

Sometimes you do know where the ideas are coming from and sometimes you don’t. You might get a song coming through that you just don’t know about. — Van Morrison

A lot of things come together to make up a song. It’s just images. — Van Morrison

I find it extremely difficult talking about my songs because there’s so many different things that can make a song come together. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

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

You’ve got to separate the singer and the songs. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

I felt kind of bored at the prospect of writing some more of my own songs because I really wasn’t saying what I wanted to say. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

I think I opened up an area with Astral Weeks that hit a lot of peoples’ nerves. But you can’t really say that they’re my favorite songs. — Van Morrison

There’s a realization that you have to do something but you just can’t do it all the time. — Van Morrison

The future is keeping you out of the present time. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

Don’t lose the wonder in your eyes It’s right there when you smile… If we go back, for a while Let me go back, for a while To that magic time — Van Morrison

Love of the simple is all that I need, I’ve no time for schism or lovers of greed. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

You can call it nostalgia, I don’t mind Standing on that windswept hillside Listening to the church bells chime Listen to the church bells chime In that magic time. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

For a long time, I couldn’t actually deal with playing concerts, it was a totally alien concept to me, ‘cos I was used to playing in clubs and dance halls. — Van Morrison

I forgot that love existed, troubled in my mind. Heartache after heartache, worried all the time. I forgot that love existed Then I saw the light Everyone around me make everything alright. — Van Morrison

I think when you get past your second album, it all becomes something of a routine. So you have to struggle against that, find a way of making what you do sound fresh and new each time. — Van Morrison

These days politics, religion, media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

Jazz comes from a tradition where it swings. Swing was the main ingredient of jazz. And once it loses the swing…well, that’s it. — Van Morrison

That’s the jazz that I like–the stuff that has a soothing effect. — Van Morrison

I understood jazz, I understood how it worked. That’s what I apply to everything. — Van Morrison

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

I’m not a rock singer and I don’t want to be a rock singer. I’m not interested. It doesn’t seem to get across. — Van Morrison

I just can’t stand jazz/rock. I think it’s the worst thing that’s come down the river yet. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

I deliberately try not to cater for the commercial market, so I can’t see myself in competition, you know, with second or third generation rock stars. — Van Morrison

I can see more naturalness in basic blues, basic R & B, basic rock ‘n’ roll. — Van Morrison

Definitely Muddy Waters has been a prime influence for anybody who’s ever done anything rock ‘n’ roll. — Van Morrison

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

Rock is gut level and it just gets to people. I think there’s far too much emphasis on intellectualization, especially in rock ‘n’ roll which is a primitive form. — Van Morrison

I’m talking about noise rock. I don’t think that noise rock element belongs in jazz. It’s not for me anyway; it just doesn’t fit. — Van Morrison

My responsibility is to fulfil what that natural thing is. The thing that I dislike about pop rock Top 40 music is that it’s not natural. — Van Morrison

Did you ever hear about the rock and roll singer who got 3 or 4 Cadillacs, saying power to the people, dance to the music, wants you to pat him on the back. — Van Morrison

Jazz musicians] couldn’t cut rock. I had to be more limited and specific about what I was doing. — Van Morrison

What excited me when I first came into it was the performing aspect and doing blues–oriented material, rock/blues oriented stuff, basic stuff, basic what they call rock ‘n’ roll. — Van Morrison

When you hear the music ringin’ in your soul And you feel it in your heart and it grows and grows And it comes from the backstreet rock & roll and the healing has begun… — Van Morrison

A lot of people who were writing when I came through originally as a singer–songwriter have disappeared. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

The trip had become boring. It wasn’t exciting anymore to totally be a singer/songwriter because it wasn’t working for me. — Van Morrison

You can’t stay the same. If you’re a musician and a singer, you have to change, that’s the way it works. — Van Morrison