Mark Heard quotes

Perhaps we have more in common by virtue of our common humanity than we have differences by virtue of our religions. (Mark Heard)
I much prefer making music to talking about it. There's something visceral about instruments and voices that transcends words. View quote
Mark Heard
Music is a solace for me now. As I age, contrary to common sense, I am more and more drawn into it and apt to spend more of my waking and some of my sleeping hours thinking about it, or just feeling about it. It is my escape. View quote
Mark Heard
But the music business is no more about truth on the outside of the Christian ghetto than it is on the inside. View quote
Mark Heard
I am apt to hire musicians sometimes because I know they will have some good jokes to tell. View quote
Mark Heard
I wish sometimes that I just didn't have to think about any of this, and could drone away my life. It would be easier. View quote
Mark Heard
If every Christian would treat just one other person with real love, I'm sure more would come to faith than do at present, with all our mass harvesting techniques. -Appalachian Melody. View quote
Mark Heard
Regular life, our humanness, often gets pushed aside. -Fingerprint. View quote
Mark Heard
When you can see through the fog for an instant, and you understand haltingly and briefly what good is, and how God is connected with that, it cannot help but put a hell of a perspective on things you perceive as problems, and help you discover multiple ways in which you have been numb. For that brief moment you feel that God's in His heaven and all's right with the world. View quote
Mark Heard
Life is much more of a compromise than I ever imagined. View quote
Mark Heard
Sometimes it seems Christians confuse their human nature with their sinful nature. The former we were created with, the latter we chose. It does us no good to try and escape our humanness and in so doing think we are escaping our sin. -Fingerprint. (Mark Heard)
Sounds are indeed like colors, and my hunger for a truer palette of colors grows day to day. View quote
Mark Heard
That's what music is about, and those are the types of experiences I value most in looking for the visceral and unidentifiable thing it is that makes music music, and not something else. View quote
Mark Heard
Artistic expression might be seen as a Darwinian protection device for the psyche of fragile individuals, for whom sensuous contact with the outside world is too much to bear, and is repressed, and must be brought up and thrust out into the open from time to time at great effort in order for them to simply survive emotionally. View quote
Mark Heard
I must at least tell somebody, even only God and myself, what I have seen and felt. View quote
Mark Heard
We were recording a song called "I Don't Ever Want To Be Without You." The same Christian record company radio guy called me and asked me if we could change the song's title and lyrics. when I asked why, he said, "Because there are two negative words in the title-don't and without ... I'd like some positive ones; can you call the song, 'I Always Want To Be With You?"' View quote
Mark Heard
After a ten minute prayer, the gist of which was, "Oh Lord, just sing through Mark tonight and keep him out of the picture altogether," I considered the prospect of lining up a great number of such concerts, then staying at home and sending a cardboard likeness of myself for God to sing through. View quote
Mark Heard
Writing brings about a catharsis of my own terror and pity. It is something I have to do. View quote
Mark Heard
A lot of times I wonder what Adam would have written songs about. -Appalachian Melody. View quote
Mark Heard
I told him I just want to write some more songs and put them on tape. I figure the content of the songs and how I choose to answer for myself is my business. He says he is sorry, even cut to the heart, but he cannot and will not sign me, as, alas, I cannot say the things he wanted to hear. I say I am sorry he cannot hear the things I'm trying to say. View quote
Mark Heard
I think seeds for doubt can be sown when a Christian is taught a narrow perspective in certain areas, and later, when that teaching is challenged by alternatives, the person panics. -Appalachian Melody. (Mark Heard)
Why pray to a god who would rather speak through say, a stone? Too bad that God made so many people who are interested in music and so few stones who are. View quote
Mark Heard
Any system of thought which allows no value to human thought will destroy its own efforts. -Fingerprint. View quote
Mark Heard
Maybe I'm just a selfish maniac who is wasting his time trying to transfer feelings which perhaps no one cares about onto a fretboard and a piece of magnetic tape. Maybe it's the modern petroglyph, or the modern way to write on the wall of your cave: "I was here." Maybe it is a cry to God about how much I hate the bad things and how much I love the good things. View quote
Mark Heard
I am increasingly irresponsible, it seems, in that I take on the mantle of Peter Pan and follow the second star to the right directly between a pair of speakers, or to the case that holds my mandolin. View quote
Mark Heard