Song Quotes

Just as a blues player can play 20 blues songs in a row but find a way to make each one different, ... I always want to find different ways to do something

My songs are basically my diaries. Some of my best songwriting has come out of time when I've been going through a personal nightmare.

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong, Under the shade of a coolibar tree, And he sang as he sat and waited for his billy-boil, You'll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me.

Writing the songs and producing the songs and arranging them and recording them is your canvas and your palette and your brush.

You say how you feel, and songs don't lie. Songs are the most honest form of human expression there is--there's nothing that lies about a song.

There should be a children's song: 'If you're happy and you know it, keep it to yourself and let your dad sleep'.

I have found life an enjoyable, enchanting, active, and sometime terrifying experience, and I've enjoyed it completely. A lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other.

Life is so short. I would rather sing one song than interpret the thousand.

[On bebop years] All I did was sing 'How High the Moon.' It seemed like the only song I ever sang.

Sing your song. Dance your dance. Tell your tale.

Faith without works is like a song you can't sing. It's about as useless as a screen door on a submarine.

There're songs to make you smile, there're songs to make you sad. But with a happy song to sing it never seems as bad.

Jesus built a ship to sing a song to, it sails the rivers and it sails the tide. Some of my friends don't know who they belong to, some can't get a single thing to work inside.

I don't want my reputation to take me over, I just want to be judged on my songs. I want people to come and see me because they want to, not because fashion dictates it.

I feel people are seeing me as a true artist rather than a singer, or an entertainer, or a girl who just makes songs.

The idea of taking a song, envisioning the overall sound in my head and then bringing the arrangement to life in the studio...well, that gives me satisfaction like nothing else.

Love is fragile. And we're not always its best caretakers. We just muddle through and do the best we can. And hope this fragile thing survives against all odds.

When I was young, I just sat down and started playing Chopsticks at the piano. I got so far and then lost interest. Eventually, I regained it and started writing songs.

It's very hard to teach someone how to write a song if to begin with there's no creative crop to harvest.

Start off each day with a song.

I think there's nothing better than seeing a three-chord straight up rock 'n' roll band in your face with sweaty music and three minute good songs.

I don't know much about God. But if everything does originate with God, then certainly songs do as well.

You can fool some of the people part of the time in a rock and roll song, fifty million Elvis Presley fans can't be all wrong.

All of a sudden there's a song - there in your hotel room playing your guitar - and you write it, and two or three years later it will come true. It keeps you on your toes.

Fear is the lock and laughter the key to your heart.

A patriotic song is an emotion and you must not embarrass an audience with it, or they will hate your guts.

My heart's never smiled so hard Baby. Lovin' you is fun.

I've been trying to get down to the heart of the matter but my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter but I think it's about forgiveness... forgiveness, even if you don't love me anymore.

If you want to make a song more hummy, add a few tiddely poms.

One love, one heart . . . Let’s get together and feel all right

If you're callin' about my heart, it's still yours.

Sinatra was pretty astute - he used the best songwriters around, he used all the resources, he covered every song from the era basically.

I feel like the actual, the most beautiful thing about a song is that it is something that goes out there in the universe and people use it in the way that they need it in their lives.

I've never sung a single song in my whole life on purpose to shock anyone. My 'hot numbers' are all, if you will notice, written about something that is real in the lives of millions of people.

No one worries about genre when they're dancing. They're not asking themselves, 'Is this song a dubstep song?'

The human mind is a wonderful thing, it starts working from before you're born and doesn't stop till you sit down to write a song.

A song marks an occasion in my life and that's how I live my life, by songs.

I've often said if I knew where the good songs came from, I'd go there more often.

What I always try to do is to respond to the song; I've always rebelled against theory.

I don't care how impossible it seems.

Best of all is it to preserve everything in a pure, still heart, and let there be for every pulse a thanksgiving, and for every breath a song.

History is an angel being blown backwards into the future

I have the opportunity, once more to right some wrongs, to pray for peace, to plant some trees, and sing more joyful songs.

I don't know why my brain has kept all the words to the Gilligan's Island theme song and has deleted everything about triangles.

Love is learning the song in someone's heart and singing it to them when they forget.

I do ballads that say what every man wants to say and that every woman wants to hear, or I do songs about social issues.

I never for a day gave up listening to the songs of our birds, or watching their peculiar habits, or delineating them in the best way I could.

The song and dance didn't stop us dying. It just stopped the fear of death swallowing us up while we were still alive.

But we used to go to flea markets and things, and look for old 78 records that had silly song titles.

No matter how often you knock at nature's door, she won't answer in words you can understand--for Nature is dumb. She'll vibrate and moan like a violin, but you mustn't expect a song.