Songwriting Quotes - Page 33

• I wake up in the morning, or the middle of the night when an idea comes through. My songwriting style, basically I just write down information given to me from the muse and how that works for songwriters. Record the muse and the muse delivers.

  Creed Bratton

  Morning, Writing, Night

  Source: www.talive.com

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• I started just concentrating on songwriting when I was abut 20; I'd been in rock bands six or seven years, kinda got that out of my system, I said, "ok, you ain't gonna be a rock star, you don't look like a rock star, it probably ain't gonna happen. So what you should do is write songs and maybe other people will do your songs."

  Billy Joel

  Song, Stars, Writing

  "Backstage With Billy Joel: The Billboard Cover Story Interview (Exclusive)". Interview with Ray Waddell, www.billboard.com. January 31, 2014.

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• I don't try to sound like anyone but me anymore. If something is out of my element, I try to avoid it.

  Norah Jones

  Trying, Sound, Elements

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• If you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that's still well and good. Folk songs had taught me that.

  Bob Dylan

  Song, Taught, Folks

  Bob Dylan (2011). “Chronicles”, p.37, Simon and Schuster

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• Listen to what children have to say-their windows to the soul are unclouded.

  Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet

  Children, Writing, Window To The Soul

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• Read something that YOU want to read, not something that you feel compelled to read.

  Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet

  Writing, Want, Feels

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• Try writing...a list, a letter, a journal, a novel, a declaration.

  Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet

  Writing, Trying, Letters

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• Say a thing well and it will be remembered-and so too will you.

  Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet

  Writing, Wells, Remembered

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• Try to begin things you feel you can do. To begin is enough-there is a boldness in beginning. And in boldness lies genius and magic.

  Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet

  Lying, Writing, Magic

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• Needless to say, there was no one around remotely fitting the description of a normal person: I was at a writing conference.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Normal, Fitting

  Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, Anchor

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• My second husband and I were going through a bitter divorce, and I didn't have the money for a fancy-pants attorney. I didn't know how to fight, so I'd lie awake at night and think of ways to kill him. But I knew I'd get caught, so I decided to put it in a book and get paid for it! I always think it's odd that a whole career came out of that homicidal impulse.

  Sue Grafton

  Husband, Lying, Book

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• I guess when we're happy, it's easier to go with the flow, and when that happiness or joy is interrupted, that's when we get contemplative and break out the guitar or pen and write about it.

  Jeremy Fisher

  Writing, Guitar, Joy

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• We definitely set out to make a great 'radio' record. We set out to write great hooky choruses-but with verses that said something.

  LeAnn Rimes

  Writing, Records, Radio

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• Back then, the business depended on bohemians. ... They needed Kristofferson and Roger Miller ..It was the tail end of something...the last Tin Pan Alley. ...and we were the night shift! They gave us keys, because they knew the best songs weren't written in daylight.... We got our keys taken away several times...me and Guy Clark.

  Steve Earle

  Song, Taken, Writing

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• Musicians always have music in their heads about their perceptions of the world.

  Pattie Boyd

  Writing, Perception, Musician

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• When you're home or you're working, your mind just isn't allowed to just roll on like it does when you're watching the scenery go by. You're hurdling through space but you're not really moving. ...It's that dreaminess, that ability to just get dreamy while you're looking out the window and you see something...and it makes you think of something else, and all of a sudden the words are just flowing out of you.

  Pegi Young

  Moving, Home, Writing

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• I do believe we should push each other to write better songs and make better music. We do ourselves a disservice if we sit back and float along the river instead of trying to paddle and guide ourselves to a more creative place.

  Bonnie Baker

  Song, Believe, Writing

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• I think a lot of my interest in history now isn't so much in places and names and texts and public figures, but more in examining all the nuances and idiosyncrasies of particular stories of everyday people. And if that doesn't happen, then I usually transplant myself and my own stories to a particular historical event. Which is why you'll see me, the first person pronoun, interacting in a song about Carl Sandburg, or you'll find my [sic] interacting with Saul Bellow. It's sort of a re-rendering of history and making it my own.

  Sufjan Stevens

  Song, Writing, Thinking

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• Songwriters I've always been drawn to are people who deal with something of depth in the lyric writing. ...I've always been influenced by the folk song, the storytelling tradition in folk music. And so for years I wrote mostly story songs. I still do that, but as I've gone on, it's gotten a little more personal. I used to write mostly in the third person. I write a little more in the first person now.

  Bruce Hornsby

  Song, Writing, Years

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• I've always thought that a lot of really good writers go wrong by getting so into the craft and the technique and perfection. Perfection can be the enemy sometimes. Some songs don't need to be told perfectly. Life is messy and has loose ends, and sometimes I think the songs should reflect that.

  Patterson Hood

  Song, Writing, Thinking

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• Hemingway was very sparse in his writing. Kris Kristofferson is like that. He can take four words and say it all.

  Todd Snider

  Writing, Four

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• Kristofferson was writing what was really in his heart and saying it in ways we hadn't heard up till that point.

  Jeffrey Steele

  Writing, Heart, Way

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• Being a good songwriter means paying attention and sticking your hand out the window to catch the song on the way to someone else's house!

  Nanci Griffith

  Song, Mean, Hands

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• As a singer I tried on all these hats, these voices, these clothes, and eventually out came me.

  Carly Simon

  Voice, Clothes, Singers

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• We've always just gotten up there and played. We don't have any dancers, we don't have all that stuff going on, we just get up there and play.

  Lenny Kravitz

  Play, Dancer, Stuff

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