Song Quotes

I do feel most at home playing live, but the feeling of getting into the studio to see the new songs take shape was really incredible.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon would often write a song a day, so I have the same workmanlike philosophy.

To create an album of 12 songs, I've got to write about 80 songs. Half of those are totally weird and rubbish.

I can't predict what songs will do to the collective consciousness.

I aim to write songs in a way that you don't have to have gone to Ghana to relate to it, you really just have to have a heart.

I get tired of the same albums, the same look and singing the same songs. When I get bored I paint, I plant trees and just do something different. I get far away from singing.

My memory is not so good so my most memorable show is the last one I played. Songs are written with intention but they only emerge in the moment.

It makes me feel great, knowing my songs are being heard and of service to people.

Through my years as a writer, I've learnt how to simplify the message and pen songs that have a more specific quality - it's not just about my ego and trying to meet girls.

My songs get to a stage where they resist any further change, you know? And that's kind of where they are, short of re-recording or starting again. That's kind of where it's gonna be.

Even before I started writing songs, that was one of my goals to be a writer, and I still have that goal. I've just gotten sidetracked.

Is it me or is President Bush's life starting to sound like a country song. He's from Texas, his dog just died, and it looks like he might lose his job. Next thing, his truck is going to break down.

In the meantime [1963-65], [Bob] Dylan was writing some of the best love songs in the genre, like "Girl From the North Country," "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," and "It Ain't Me, Babe."

In honor of his new Nobel, this hard-core Dylanophile wants to share with you a song or two from each of his many incarnations. Because you deserve to know.

Except in these latter-day songs, [Bob] Dylan is a grizzled old prophet who's already been to hell and back.

The best songs of this [modern] period - the apocalyptic "High Water," for example - return [Bob] Dylan to where he was in his first phase, updating and transforming American traditional music.

I can't write story-songs, like I couldn't write a Bob Dylan or Tom Waits song. I can only write whatever weird phrases come into my head, and hope that they're good.

If you hear a good song, it makes you hopeful like, That is out there.

The skin of all of us is responsive to gypsy songs and military marches.

I don't think we should speak so much. What if we were singing a song? We split, whilst singing.

I think artists are entitled to their songs. I'm very vocal and I understand that not everybody's gonna like me; it's not for everyone.

some genius of the South With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth, Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.

Ever since I picked up a bass, I've written songs.

My songs pretty much revolve in my brain most of the time - usually, whatevers coming next.

That's something that I think as a songwriter you have to ask yourself - why you're doing it. The world certainly doesn't need more songs. Are you doing it just for your ego?

My highest aspirations as a songwriter are that people would sing my songs or know songs I've written sometime in as far into the future as I feel comfortable seeing.

I like making songs up. Whether or not they're great songs or good songs, whatever. It's something I've always done, and I definitely feel like I've gotten better at it.

I always think its easier for me to write without thinking about the strict meter that's required for songs and song structures and things like that. It's much easier to just write on the page.

I think the songs are more about relationships that are endless.

I always think I don't have any songs, I don't have anything I'm working on, and I get in the studio and realize there are 20 things I'm thinking about. It's just kind of second nature.

I don't think there is anything hard at all about having a lot of songs. It makes it easier to be less precious about them, and know that everybody's going to want to work on some of them.

I have always thought it was important to maintain some connection for myself to what it takes to make a song work by myself, to put a song across to an audience by myself.

I don't think talking about myself making songs is a very interesting topic, there are so many other more engaging things to think about and write about.

Everybody has a direct view of the person "behind" the art, so there is going to be a certain amount of awareness of who is making songs. But I like paintings where you can see the brush-strokes.

I always like Madonna; any Madonna song is good for me.

Old school Janet Jackson is always good. I usually go old school, it's very rare that I pick a song from nowadays.

I like to have songs with me that have substance. That's missing from a lot of today's music. You might hear a song with a catchy beat, but what's it about? It's not empowering or helping anyone.

This film [the Cell] certainly is not meant for the girls who sing along with my songs.

Whenever I have a bunch of tunes written, I always find a kind of uniform that accompanies the songs.

When it's a folk festival, there's more of an intention on the song and connecting with people.

I hate when songwriters refer to their songs as babies.

I think all of my songs are either based on personal experience or will be based on personal experience, because I do write a lot of songs prophetically.

I was trying to actively get away from music, I guess. But I recorded a whole bunch of instrumental piano songs.

I kind of like polishing the songs that I'm working on. I'm really working hard on some specific songs.

When I performed the songs in front of an audience at the end of each project and I knew the storytellers were in the crowd listening, that was hard.

The fate of a song is often established in the first 15 minutes of writing.

Vocal arrangements are something I'm working a lot with for the new songs.

Today the mockingbird does not sound very happy. It sounds if it is coming apart. As of the very heart of itself-its song-is breaking into pieces and flying off in a hundred directions.

I feel like tiny bird with a big song!

I love Neil Young. His songs were the first songs I learned to play, and I recommend anyone who is starting guitar to learn Neil Young songs first.