Song Quotes

The saddest songs are written when a person is happy.

I found it unbearable when I allow the song to meet the music, to allow the story to meet the music.

My favorite period is when we lived in the land of the three-minute song. The Motown thing - I thought they were genius in knowing that's as much as a listener can take.

I just try to tell a story with a song, and be able to try to transmit the emotion to you. That's all I'm really trying to do.

There's no hierarchy in suffering. I think songs that are transcendent are the ones where everyone can feel something from it, you know?

Songs are snapshots of things - it's likened to looking at pictures.

Songs are snapshots of things - it's likened to looking at pictures. It will never feel like it felt in real life. When you look at it, it always feels different. It's sort of the same with songs.

Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast.

I studied voice at Yale with Blake Stern from the music school, and he had me singing German lieder and Italian songs.

For music, I always just played music myself - and, I had rock bands and wrote songs and put bands together that were loud, but not especially good. That was sort of the place music had in my career.

When I first started out, I thought it was enough to make an angry song that pointed out the problems of the world.

I don't keep up with it all. But Taylor Swift writes songs about everybody she goes out with, right? What a way to build a career.

America is a song that sounds the best when we all sing together - at least for a while.

With writing music and writing songs and recording music and coming up with stuff, you need to kind of reengage that kind of inner child to come up with interesting perceptions.

I love grooves and dance music, but I like the feeling behind songs too.

If I'm feeling something, I know if it's a song, or if it's a little story that I'm going to write, or if it's a painting or play. I might sit down and write a play.

The process depends on the situation, and I don't think there are any two songs that have gone exactly the same way... well, actually, that's not true.

I may be preaching to the choir, but the choir needs a good song.

I'm doing a record that has a story that runs through all of the songs, and then there is also a film that goes along with it.

For me, as a music fan, visuals kind of steal away the purity of the song. My instinct is not to provide a visual to go with a piece of music. But here's MTV. It's really powerful.

As far as Rap goes Tupac was my favorite, I used to sing some of his songs in my set before I ever met his dad.

I am sure as I grow older I will understand more about my own feelings and how to put them in a song.

Captive people have a need for song.

Shakespeare's work is like a good song: you never really forget the main lines.

I guess the approach to song writing for me so far has been to use more chords and less math.

My template for most songs is 'Is this inspiring?' and with the blues it so often is.

There's hundreds of different ways of writing songs.

You have to write a song around this specific character or to enhance a specific scene. A lot of other craft goes on.

We have recorded songs on the same day that were released years later in other albums.

If you write 50 songs, you're bound to write at least a dozen good ones.

I get sick when I think about someone going to iTunes and downloading two songs off our album. It's not meant to be listened to that way.

I'm not here to write a song for you, I'm here to help you write a song for yourself.

I can write hundreds of songs on simple power chords.

In my older songs, I used to hide behind fictional characters to deflect attention away from myself.

It does make sense to put on some songs that are relatively short, because radio usually only plays songs that are less than 4 or 5 minutes.

I've written some poetry, but...songs have to be more poetic, and I've really gotten to this non-poetic sort of writing.

I guess there are two things that make me like songs generally, of ours, and that is if they groove well, or if they have a jam that can go somewhere.

I feel like I want to write some songs and I don't know how to go about doing it. Usually it's the lyrics that are a problem, and I think I am not really cut out to be a lyricist.

I haven't written enough songs to be able to say that I have a system. I've only written a handful.

Europe is weird songs that would never make it in America.

People who understand Doom don't blink an eye at song lengths.

I've been walking to school and trying to figure out what's going on there; some of the production and songs are so ridiculous. I want to get inside that.

Your testimony doesn't mean anything if it is not your testimony. So every song that I write it happened at one point in my life or another.

Everybody needs inspiration Everbody needs a song. A beautiful melody, When the night's so long. Cause there is no guarantee, That this life is easy.

It's hard to imagine that our love is a story with an end. But you know, at least I'm getting some really good songs out of it

When you write or sing a song that means something to you, you are saying, 'You know what? This is who I am!'

I don't feel like I have a lot of reference to sexual innuendo on my songs.

I love to sing, and I've recorded a few covers and originals with friends, but I haven't written any songs.

I can reach the mass audience if I come from different perspectives on every song.

We write so many songs, it is difficult to narrow them down.