110+ Van Morrison Quotes On Soulful, Bluesy And Poetic

Van Morrison is a British musician, singer, and songwriter. He is best known for his hit single, "Brown Eyed Girl," released in 1967. He is considered one of the most influential and successful musicians of all time, having sold over 80 million records worldwide. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Van Morrison on love, soulful, bluesy.

Top 10 Van Morrison Quotes

1. Smell the sea and feel the sky.
2. The fog of illusion, the fog of confusion is hanging all over the world.
3. 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.
4. Hark, now hear the sailors cry, smell the sea, and feel the sky let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic.
5. 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.
6. Music is spiritual. The music business is not.
7. I think Paul McGuinness and U2 created the Irish music industry. It certainly wasn't there before that.
8. Let go into the mystery Let yourself go You've got to open up your heart That's all I know Trust what I say and do what you're told Baby, and all your dirt will turn Into gold.
9. Making love in the green grass behind the stadium with you my brown eyed girl.
10. In deep confusion, in great despair, when I reach out for him, he is there. When I am lonely as I can be, then I know God shines his light on me.

Van Morrison Short Quotes

• Once in a blue moon someone like you comes along.
• Go up to the mountain, go up to the glen, where silence will touch you, and heartbreak will mend.
• If my heart could do my thinking, would my brain begin to feel?
• The wild night is calling.
• Large audiences did not suit my low-key approach.
• Spiritual hunger and spiritual thirst But you got to change it On the inside first To be satisfied
• I'm a working man in my prime cleaning windows.
• No guru, no method, no teacher, just you and I and nature, and the father in the garden.
• It's all complete instinct and intuition, and that's extremely difficult to teach.
• Going down the old mine with a transistor radio.

Van Morrison Quotes About Love

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

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

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

When all the dark clouds roll away And the sun begins to shine I see my freedom from across the way And it comes right in on time Well it shines so bright and it gives so much light And it comes from the sky above Makes me feel so free makes me feel like me And lights my life with love. — 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

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

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

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

You know what they're writing about Baby you know what they're writing about It's a thing called love down through the ages Makes you wanna cry sometimes Makes you feel like you wanna lay down and die sometimes Makes you high sometimes But when you really get in it lifts you right up. — Van Morrison

Van Morrison Quotes About Soulful

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

Won't You guide me through the dark night of the soul That I may better understand Your way... Let me purify my thoughts and words and deeds That I may be a vehicle for Thee... Give me my rapture today. — Van Morrison

And I want to rock your gypsy soul Just like way back in the days of old And magnificently we will fold into the mystic — Van Morrison

Oh won't you stay Stay a while with your own ones Don't ever stray Stray so far from your own ones 'Cause the world is so cold Don't care nothing for your soul That you share with your own ones. — Van Morrison

Let your soul and spirit fly. — Van Morrison

Van Morrison Quotes About Music

Into the Music was about the first album where I felt, 'I'm starting here'...the Wavelength thing, I didn't really feel that was me. — Van Morrison

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

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

The music I really like to get off on is the old rhythm 'n' blues and rock 'n' roll stuff... that's what I really dig. And I also dig to sing ballads as well. And I also dig writing my own songs. I was just trying to find a way of integrating the whole thing, taking a look at the total picture. — Van Morrison

It's like something happened to you that caused you to do what you do...you heard something somewhere, you felt something about this music that was definitely part of your own vision. That's what the whole thing is like. — Van Morrison

[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. — Van Morrison

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. — 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

We're [with Robbie Robertson ] jazz musicians. The context may be rock 'n' roll but it's still jazz. It's jazz and that means improvization...you play a tune the way it feels and you play it differently every time. It can never be the same. — Van Morrison

Van Morrison Quotes About Started

When I started you were more in touch with the people you were playing to. There wasn't the distance or the separation that there is now. — Van Morrison

When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration. — 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

When I first started drinking, everybody was doing it. That was before they discovered marijuana and all that. It was the late 50s, early 60s - it was the beginnings of the rock 'n' roll era. The main drink was like wine. And even that was a romantic throwback to something. — Van Morrison

When I started out in this business, I was a performer before I was a songwriter, I was a performer before I was recording. Performing is the roots. That's where it all came from. You didn't start out doing it because you wanted to make an album. — Van Morrison

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. — 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

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. — Van Morrison

The idea [of A Period of Transition album] was to get a break from everything for a while because I've been doing it for so long. I started doing it when I was 12. — Van Morrison

It was really strange for me when I started to play concerts in America where the audiences were all sitting down. — Van Morrison

Van Morrison Quotes About Life

There is no black-and-white situation. It's all part of life. Highs, lows, middles. — Van Morrison

Do you remember the time darlin' when everything made more sense in the world? Oh I remember, I remember... when life made more sense... Take me back, take me back, take me way back... to when life made more sense. — Van Morrison

Hearing the blues changed my life. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

I'm very lucky, I'm happy with life because my experiences led me to do what I had to do. I don't have any regrets whatsoever. — Van Morrison

Van Morrison Quotes About Play

My ambition when I started out was to play two or three gigs a week. And that's what I'm doing. — Van Morrison

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

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

I realized that what I was looking for was doing collaborations with other people - people who can play a ballad, rock, jazz. I was looking for more co-op type things than what I had been doing, which had been completely my own trip. — 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

Music to me is spontaneous, writing is spontaneous and it's all based on not trying to do it. From beginning to end, whether it's writing a song, or playing guitar, or a particular chord sequence, or blowing a horn, it's based on improvisation and spontaneity. — 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 fact I wasn't getting off made me realize that I really had to take a hard look at it and at the type of music that I played, which ranges from ballads to country type stuff to rock and rhythm 'n' blues. It takes in a wider spectrum. — Van Morrison

Van Morrison Quotes About Singer

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

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

Then it evolved into more of a ballad style singer/songwriter thing. And there was a conflict in trying to merge the two styles with the same band behind me. 'Cause the musicians that I would need to do ballad-oriented tunes would require musicians who were more into jazz. — 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

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

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

When you perform live, it's a different trip - it's different energy. I just felt a conflict between both of the trips. I was trying to evaluate what it meant for me to be a singer/songwriter and what that whole thing all meant. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

Van Morrison Famous Quotes And Sayings

When it's not always raining there'll be days like this. When there's no one complaining there'll be days like this. When everything falls into place like the flick of a switch. Well my mama told me there'll be days like this. — Van Morrison

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

Leave your thoughtlessness behind you then you may begin to understand. Clear the emptiness around you with the waving of your hand. — Van Morrison

I've never felt like I was born with a silver spoon at all, although I've felt like howling at the moon a lot of times! — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

I'm a dweller of the threshold and I'm waiting at the door, and I'm standing in the darkness, I don't want to wait no more. — 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

The summer breeze was blowing on your face Within your violet you treasure your summery words And as the shiver from my neck down to my spine Ignited me in daylight and nature in the garden — Van Morrison

I don't think nostalgia has to be negative. — 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

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

You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense. — Van Morrison

Someone once described me as a maverick and that's what I would say. I'm a maverick not by choice but by conviction. — Van Morrison

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

In order to win you must be prepared to lose something. And leave one or two cards showing. — Van Morrison

And I shall watch the ferry boats, and they'll get high, on a bluer ocean against tomorrow's sky. and i will never grow so old again, and i will walk and talk, in gardens all wet with rain. — Van Morrison

In order to win you must be prepared to lose sometime. And leave one or two cards showing. — Van Morrison

I like to see people reaching back for the roots and for the reason why. Not intellectually, but just for the gut feeling of what it's all about. — Van Morrison

Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag. — Van Morrison

From the dark end of the street - To the bright side of the road - We'll be lovers once again on the - Bright side of the road — Van Morrison

I was just getting tired of the image bullshit...that man of mystery trip and what have you. What's that all about? — Van Morrison

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

Way across the country where the hillside mountains glide, the dynamo of your smile caressed the barefoot virgin child. — Van Morrison

Ambition will take you And ride you too far and Conservatism bring you to boredom once more Sit down by the river And watch the stream flow Recall all the dreams That you once used to know The things you've forgotten That took you away To pastures not greener but meaner. — Van Morrison

There's an angel that's watching right over you All your trials have not been in vain Won't you lift your head up to the starry night Finding strength in the things that remain. — Van Morrison

When heart is open, you will change just like a flower slowly opening. — Van Morrison

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

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

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

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

The job of the jazz people is to take it as far as it will go and that's what they're doing. But in the process of taking it out there, there has to be some times when they're not getting it right. It all depends on what you dig. I personally don't think the fusion of jazz with the heaviness of rock is working. — Van Morrison

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

I wanted to find out why I wasn't getting off on what I was doing and try and make some sense out of the evolution of it. — Van Morrison

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

I was all caught up with identifying with certain things. They just weren't very stimulating things. — 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

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. — Van Morrison

Every performance is different. That's the beauty of it. — Van Morrison

That's what it is-it's jazz. It's just jazz. That's what the whole thing is about to me. It's about what's happening right now in this context. This conversation is jazz to a certain extent. It's improvisation. What appeals to me about music is the improvization. That's what I don't like about the media-they're not living it. — Van Morrison

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

All the girls walk by dressed up for each other, and the boys do the boogie woogie on the corner of the street. — Van Morrison

[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. — Van Morrison

Common one, my illuminated one, oh my high in the art of suffering. Take a walk with me. — 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

There's quite a few people getting into that - new acts coming along that are using a lot of stuff that happened in the 50s and 60s. They're completely ignoring the 70s which is kind of a turn on because to me nothing has really gone down in the 70s. — Van Morrison

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. — Van Morrison

Like I said, basically I'm a rocker. That's about it. Things that I've done away from that-branches that I've gotten into off of that - are just other streams, other things that I can do. — Van Morrison

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. — 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

I just wanted to have a look at my whole musical career, get right back to when I started and why I started doing it in the first place. — Van Morrison

The way I was singing the songs was jazz — Van Morrison

Singing is my profession - there is no plan B. — Van Morrison

You gotta fight every day to keep mediocrity at bay. — Van Morrison

Way over on the railroad, Tomorrow all the tipping trucks will unload together, Every scrapbook stuck with glue, And I'll stand beside you, Beside you, child. — Van Morrison

I have some intellectual-type pursuits, like studying philosophy and stuff like that. — Van Morrison

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

Let me purify my thoughts and words and deeds that I may be a vehicle for thee. — Van Morrison

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

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

It's not that big a mystery about types. It's not even that big a mystery why so many people are picking up on things now. It's like we were talking about the primitive thing before and all that. Nothing has really changed much. The things that have changed are like we're on the noon now. There are more buildings now. But we're still basically two monkeys sitting here. — Van Morrison

Life Lessons by Van Morrison

1. Life is a journey, and it's important to take the time to appreciate the moments along the way. Van Morrison's music often reflects this idea, emphasizing the importance of slowing down and enjoying the present.
2. It's important to stay true to yourself and your own creative vision. Van Morrison has consistently released music that is true to his own style and has never compromised his artistic integrity.
3. It's important to stay humble and remember that success is not the only measure of a person's worth. Van Morrison has remained humble despite his success and has always kept his music and life simple.