Quotes from Van Morrison

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

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.

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.

You can't stop us on the road to freedom, you can't stop us cause our eyes can see.

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

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

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.

I never bought the commercial thing, at any stage of the game.

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.

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

Men come, men go, all things remain in God.

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.

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

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

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

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.

I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. That's what I do. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it.

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

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.

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.

Hearing the blues changed my life.

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.

You learn to read the audiences after a while, and there are all different kinds of gigs.

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.