Joni Mitchell Quotes

We're captive on the carousel of time, we can't return we can only look behind.

And the seasons they go 'round and 'round And the painted ponies go up and down We're captive on the carousel of time We can't return we can only look behind From where we came And go round and round and round In the circle game.

Keep a good heart. That's the most important thing in life. It's not how much money you make or what you can acquire. The art of it is to keep a good heart.

When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark.

Chase away the demons, and they will take the angels with them.

You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining.

We are stardust, we are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Freedom to me is a luxury of being able to follow the path of the heart, to keep the magic in your life. Freedom is necessary for me in order to create, and if I cannot create I don’t feel alive.

Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl. Most of my best work came out of it.

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels The dizzy dancing way you feel As every fairy tale comes real I've looked at love that way.

Ira Gershwin, shame on him. I mean, some of the writing.

Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees, please.

All my battles were with male egos. I’m just looking for equality, not to dominate. But I want to be able to control my vision.

Oh, the jealousy, the greed is the unraveling. It's the unraveling and it undoes all the joy that could be. .

I am as constant as a northern star

people will tell you were they have gone, they'll tell you where to go, but until you get there for yourself you never really know.

My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species.

A few drinks later you're not so choosy when the closing lights strip off the shadows on this strange new flesh you've found.

I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He gets a bad rap; hes very misunderstood. Hes a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers.

You've got to shake your fists at lightning now, you've got to roar like forest fire You've got to spread your light like blazes all across the sky They're going to aim the hoses on you, show 'em you won't expire Not till you burn up every passion, not even when you die Come on now, you've got to try, if you're feeling contempt, well then you tell it If you're tired of the silent night, Jesus, well then you yell it Condemned to wires and hammers, strike every chord that you feel That broken trees and elephant ivories conceal

All I really, really want our love to do is to bring out the best in me and in you too.

Rationally I have no hope, irrationally I believe in miracles.

You've got to keep the child alive; you can't create without it.

I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead.

Yesterday a child came out to wonder Caught a dragonfly inside a jar Fearful when the sky was full of thunder And tearful at the falling of a star

Lord, there's danger in this land, you get witch hunts and wars when church and state hold hands.

Ask anyone in America where the craziest people live and they'll tell you California. Ask anyone in California where the craziest people live and they'll say Los Angeles. Ask anyone in Los Angeles where the craziest people live and they'll tell you Hollywood. Ask anyone in Hollywood where the craziest people live and they'll say Laurel Canyon. And ask anyone in Laurel Canyon where the craziest people live and they'll say Lookout Mountain. So I bought a house on Lookout Mountain.

The only thing I have to give to make you smile, to win you with, are all the mornings still to live.

The most important thing is to write in your own blood. I bare intimate feelings because people should know how other people feel.

I thrive on change. That's probably why my chord changes are weird, because chords depict emotions. They'll be going along on one key and I'll drop off a cliff, and suddenly they will go into a whole other key signature. That will drive some people crazy, but that's how my life is.

They won't give peace a chance, that's just a dream some of us had

All romantics meet the same fate some day. Drunk and cynical and boring someone in some dark cafe.

The Blue album, there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there, either.

I see music as fluid architecture.

The thing that gave me the most pain in life, psychologically, and it gave me tremendous pain psychologically, is man's disrespect for nature.

The times you impress me the most are the times when you don't try.

I was demanding of myself a deeper and greater honesty, more and more revelation in my work in order to give it back to the people where it goes into their lives and nourishes them and changes their direction and makes light bulbs go off in their head and makes them feel. And it isn't vague, it strikes against the very nerves of their life and in order to do that you have to strike against the very nerves of your own.

There'll be icicles and birthday clothes And sometimes there'll be sorrow

Whatever it was that I felt was the weak link in my previous project gave me inspiration for the next one.

There's a man who's been out sailing In a decade full of dreams And he takes her to a schooner And he treats her like a queen Bearing beads from California With their amber stones and green He has called her from the harbor He has kissed her with his freedom He has heard her off to starboard In the breaking and the breathing Of the water weeds While she was busy being free

Fly silly sea bird, no dreams can possess you, no voices can blame you for sun on your wings.

I am a woman of heart and mind, looking for affection and respect, a little passion.

When I think of your kisses my mind see-saws.

I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?

My family could only afford to get me the box of eight Crayola crayons, but I craved the one with all 24 colours. I wanted magenta and turquoise and silver and gold.

I wanna be strong, I wanna laugh along, I wanna belong to the living. Alive, alive, I wanna get up and jive, Wanna wreck my stockings in some jukebox dive.

The God of the Old Testament is the depiction of evil.

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

Let light hearts remake us.

They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum.