James Taylor Quotes

Americans work a long away ahead of themselves because of the size of the place. To make any impact at all you have to promote yourself with live performances ages before a release.

That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Grammys because I don't see the music world as a competitive sport.

Certain things in life are more important than the usual crap that everyone strives for.

I feel like if you let someone else create your vision, then it's not true to your band. No one can ever do as good as you want, or as good as you can yourself.

Ireland, Italy and Brazil are the most musical places for me. They're extremely musical cultures and anything you pitch they basically catch.

The SECRET to Love is in OPENING up your Heart

All it really needed was the proper point of view. No one's gonna bring me down.

Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.

Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose Won't you let me go down in my dreams?

I sometimes wonder how many of these lifetime achievement awards you can accept before you have to do the decent thing and die.

My brother Alex fell in love with rhythm and blues early and gave me a strong dose of it.

I'm glad that I still have the ability to tour in Europe. I do love it.

If the gig's going really well, I'm incredibly happy on stage and really feel good about my life and things.

Songs are like myths. Myths are useful because they allow you to cast yourself and your life and your own experience. And for some people, 'Fire and Rain' speaks to them in that way.

Somehow it helps just to take something that's internal and externalize it, to see it in front of you.

Won't you look down upon me Jesus, you've got to help me make a stand. You just got to see me through another day.

Music is my living. I enjoy selling my music.

Maybe my biggest aim is to bring a sense of that old mystery of rock 'n' roll into the new age of today's instantaneous and fast world.

He's halfway sick and halfway stoned. He'd sure like to kick, but he's too far gone. So they wind him down with methadone.

The sides are steep and the nights are long and cold down in the hole, light and love and the world above mean nothing to the mole.

Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you gotta do is call, and I'll be there, 'cause you've got a friend.

Shower the people you love with love Show them the way that you feel Things are gonna work out fine if you only will.

All invisible from where we stand the connections come to pass, and though too strong to comprehend they affect us not the less.

To me, very much of what is artistic is people's very creative and inventive ways out of impossible situations.

Creativity is the process that gives life to a new product.

Once you get that two-way energy thing going, everyone benefits hugely.

We all have to face pain, and pain makes us grow.

O, it's enough to be on your way. It's enough just to cover ground. It's enough to be moving on. Home: better build it behind your eyes. Carry it in your heart, Safe among your own.

It's the nature of human consciousness to look for trouble constantly, and we find it. We find it.

Something I do love about social media is how you can expand your idea. You can make an extension of your art as opposed to just using it for promotion.

I think there's probably a God-shaped hole in everybody's being. Even if God only exists in people's minds, He's still a force.

I wanted to perform, I wanted to write songs, and I wanted to get lots of chicks.

I am myself for a living. I don't animate a character.

Do me wrong, do me right, tell me lies, but hold me tight.

A concert is always like a feast day to me.

I don't build no heathen temples, where the Lord has done laid a hand. There's a well on the hill, let it be.

Photographers and reporters are mostly after me. They want to know what I read and what I'm like and I don't really know myself, so how can I tell them?

But it's only after you've played it on the road 20 or 30 times that it becomes really finished and polished...and you realize what it means, and you get the phrasing right.

I think it surprises a lot of people that I'm still around, you know, still - that I'm not pushing up daisies, as they say.

Einstein said that he never could understand it all, the planets spinning in space, the smile upon your face.

Within my heart is carved a sculpture of your love.

I'm looking forward to being able to retire from being a public figure and being able to afford to be myself!

You can bring your enemies to their knees with the possible exception of the North Vietnamese.

If I were to try to identify a turning point I'd say that was it - getting clean.

It was like the top of the roof came off the house, .. He had that effect on everyone.

I can't thank you enough for showing up. It's not the same without you.

I don't think anyone really says anything new.

A song is what you fall in love with first, but then I think a band's ideals and a band's sense of fashion and a sense of how they treat people is what you fall in love with afterwards.

Bruce Springsteen's a rock star. Elton John is a rock star. I'm a folk musician. Honestly, I think that's true.