John Prine Quotes

• Bewildered, bewildered, you have no complaint. You are what you are, and you ain't what you ain't.

  John Prine

  Philosophy, Complaints, Bewildered

  77 Copy quote

• I guess if you keep making the same mistake long enough, it becomes your style.

  John Prine

  Mistake, Long, Style

  101 Copy quote

• Blow up your TV...throw away your paper...move to the country and build you a home. Plant a little garden...eat a lot of peaches...try and find Jesus on your own.

  John Prine

  Country, Jesus, Moving

  98 Copy quote

• The scientific nature of the ordinary man is to go out and do the best you can.

  John Prine

  Philosophy, Men, Ordinary

  Song: Humidity Built The Snowman

  68 Copy quote

• Writing is about a blank piece of paper and leaving out what’s not supposed to be there.

  John Prine

  Writing, Leaving, Pieces

  56 Copy quote

• Bowl of oatmeal tried to stare me down... and won.

  John Prine

  Oatmeal, Down And, Staring

  Song: Illegal Smile

  32 Copy quote

• If heartaches was commercials, we'd all be on TV.

  John Prine

  Heartache, Tvs, Ifs

  38 Copy quote

• Now Jesus, he don't like killing, no matter what the reason is for, and your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore.

  John Prine

  Religious, Jesus, Heaven

  42 Copy quote

• I just tried to come up with some honest songs. What I was writing about was real plain stuff that I wasn't sure was going to be interesting to other people. But I guess it was...I've never had any discipline whatsoever. I just wait on a song like I was waiting for lightning to strike. And eventually-usually sometime around 3 in the morning-I'll have a good idea. By the time the sun comes up, hopefully, I'll have a decent song.

  John Prine

  Song, Morning, Real

  43 Copy quote

• How the hell can a person go to work in the morning
  And come home in the evening and have nothing to say

  John Prine

  Morning, Home, Evening

  Song: Angel from Montgomery

  47 Copy quote

• I'm fascinated by America...it's so odd.

  John Prine

  America, Odd, Songwriting

  42 Copy quote

• I think the more the listener can contribute to the song, the better; the more they become part of the song, and they fill in the blanks. Rather than tell them everything, you save your details for things that exist. Like what color the ashtray is. How far away the doorway was. So when you're talking about intangible things like emotions, the listener can fill in the blanks and you just draw the foundation.

  John Prine

  Song, Thinking, Color

  25 Copy quote

• I just tried to come up with some honest songs. What I was writing about was real plain stuff that I wasn't sure was going to be interesting to other people. But I guess it was.

  John Prine

  Song, Real, Writing

  19 Copy quote

• I guess what I always found funny was the human condition. There is a certain comedy and pathos to trouble and accidents. Like, when a driver has parked his car crookedly and then wonders why he has the bad luck of being hit.

  John Prine

  Country, Car, Luck

  31 Copy quote

• MAKE ME AN ANGEL THAT FLIES FROM MONTGOMERY, MAKE ME A POSTER OF AN OLD RODEO JUST GIVE ME ONE THING THAT I CAN HOLD ON TO TO BELIEVE IN THIS LIVIN' IS JUST A HARD WAY TO GO.

  John Prine

  Believe, Angel, Giving

  Song: Angel From Montgomery

  38 Copy quote

• I always knew Gordon Lightfoot was a really great songwriter, but his stuff even sounds better and better all the time. It's just so really good to me. It's just like that's what should be in a dictionary, you know, next to a really good contempory folk song, is a Gordon Lightfoot song.

  John Prine

  Song, Sound, Stuff

  39 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Prine

  Song, Rocks, Rock And Roll

  Song: Ain't Hurtin' Nobody, Album: Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings, 1995

  25 Copy quote

• The best way to write a song is to think of something else and then the song kind of creeps in. The beginning makes no sense whatsoever. It just, like, rhymes. And then all of a sudden I'll go into, I am an old woman named after my mother.

  John Prine

  Mother, Song, Writing

  Source: www.npr.org

  12 Copy quote

• Some of the songs come so fully, it's like they are pre-packaged. There have been a couple that came in the middle of the night. And I thought, jeez, I'll never forget that. And went back to sleep, and it was gone. You'll hear something years later that another songwriter that you respect writes, and you go, jeez, I think that was the remnants of that song that got sent to me.

  John Prine

  Song, Couple, Sleep

  29 Copy quote

• I edit as I go. Especially when I go to commit it to paper. I prefer a typewriter even to a computer. I don't like it. There's no noise on the computer. I like a typewriter because I am such a slow typist. I edit as I am committing it to paper. I like to see the words before me and I go, "Yeah, that's it." They appear before me and they fit. I don't usually take large parts out. If I get stuck early in a song, I take it as a sign that I might be writing the chorus and don't know it. Sometimes,you gotta step back a little bit and take a look at what you're doing.

  John Prine

  Song, Writing, Typewriters

  26 Copy quote

• Now Jesus don't like killin'/No matter what the reason's for.

  John Prine

  Jesus, Matter, No Matter What

  Song: Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore

  15 Copy quote

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