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Creativity Quote by Nana Mouskouri

"My energy to sing, I get it from my singing. Singing was not a reason to make a living. This is the only thing I wanted to do"

About this Quote

There is a quiet flex in the way Nana Mouskouri frames ambition as a loop, not a ladder. "My energy to sing, I get it from my singing" rejects the modern myth of the artist as a battery that drains for an audience. Her fuel is the act itself. It is self-referential on purpose: singing replenishes what it consumes. That circular logic reads less like a motivational poster and more like a survival strategy for someone who has had to outlast eras, formats, and taste cycles.

The second line is the sharper blade. "Singing was not a reason to make a living" draws a line between vocation and monetization, and it does so without romantic poverty cosplay. Mouskouri was, famously, prolific and commercially massive across languages and markets. So the point isn't that she refused success; it's that she refused to let success be the justification. She recasts earning as a side effect, not the thesis statement.

"This is the only thing I wanted to do" lands as both devotion and boundary. It's a kind of minimalism that reads radical now, when creative work is often packaged as a "brand" with adjacent hustles and content streams. Mouskouri's subtext is that focus is not naivete; it's a discipline. The intent is simple but strategically phrased: to protect the core pleasure of performance from being audited by economics, trends, or anyone else's idea of a sensible career.

Quote Details

TopicMusic
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Mouskouri, Nana. (2026, January 16). My energy to sing, I get it from my singing. Singing was not a reason to make a living. This is the only thing I wanted to do. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-energy-to-sing-i-get-it-from-my-singing-134231/

Chicago Style
Mouskouri, Nana. "My energy to sing, I get it from my singing. Singing was not a reason to make a living. This is the only thing I wanted to do." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-energy-to-sing-i-get-it-from-my-singing-134231/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"My energy to sing, I get it from my singing. Singing was not a reason to make a living. This is the only thing I wanted to do." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-energy-to-sing-i-get-it-from-my-singing-134231/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Nana Mouskouri (born October 13, 1934) is a Musician from Greece.

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