1.
Hands, touching hands, reaching out, touching me, touching you.
Neil Diamond
2.
Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory.
Neil Diamond
3.
Chelsea Morning is a great Joni Mitchell song and I guess I'm partial to her lyrics because they show me a slightly different perspective on life.
Neil Diamond
4.
My voice is unadorned. I don't try for perfection. I try to be honest and truthful and soulful with the voice I have. If I make mistakes in notes, or there are cracks in notes, I don't fix them. That's the way it is.
Neil Diamond
5.
When you're on a merry-go-round, you miss a lot of the scenery.
Neil Diamond
6.
You have to go out there and give a piece of yourself -- your life, your soul. And you better give the audience everything you can -- physically, emotionally, musically. Then maybe they'll accept you and give you a standing ovation at the end.
Neil Diamond
7.
Songs are life in 80 words or less.
Neil Diamond
8.
Brooklyn is not the easiest place to grow up in, although I wouldn't change that experience for anything.
Neil Diamond
9.
Love is still a simple act of faith, and a faithful heart is always worth the wait.
Neil Diamond
10.
The music is key. It has the power to transport you. I go from being a slightly insecure, shy kind of a person offstage, to this super-confident, motivated, entity onstage.
Neil Diamond
11.
Performing is the easiest part of what I do, and songwriting is the hardest.
Neil Diamond
12.
Then come and as we lay, beside this sleepy glade, there I will sing to you my Longfellow serenade.
Neil Diamond
13.
Drop your shrink and stop your drinkin', crunchy granola's neat.
Neil Diamond
14.
Don't need to say please to no man for a happy tune.
Neil Diamond
15.
I couldn't resist. I went over and joined in, and we just sang the song together, ... They had no idea that I had written it, or who I was. I was just some weird guy who wanted to join in on the singing.
Neil Diamond
16.
I thank the Lord for the night time.
Neil Diamond
17.
I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.
Neil Diamond
18.
My music is in young people's lives because it's so much a part of their parents' lives.
Neil Diamond
19.
I'm trying to find the truth in myself. To play somebody else doesn't interest me. It's not the focus of my life. I can get through most scenes and do the acting part of it, and at best, I'm going to be mediocre.
Neil Diamond
20.
Because my musical training has been limited, I've never been restricted by what technical musicians might call a song.
Neil Diamond
21.
Money talks, but it don't sing and dance, and it don't walk. And long as I can have you here with me, I'd much rather be, forever in blue jeans.
Neil Diamond
22.
Love never doubts or suffers or cries. Love shows no fear, love tells no lies.
Neil Diamond
23.
I get good vibes from people. There is a thread of DNA that runs from the days that I was a young teenager to these days. It feels good to go back there.
Neil Diamond
24.
I used to go to my kids' soccer games and I was the only parent who wasn't screaming, because I'd have to do a show that night. It was hard. Moms and dads get more emotional at those soccer and Little League games than at a professional game.
Neil Diamond
25.
Nothing is sadder than love left unheard.
Neil Diamond
26.
I still need practice in enjoying the fruits of success.
Neil Diamond
27.
I am, I cried. I am, I said. And I am lost.
Neil Diamond
28.
The lyrics aren't simple, either. They're extremely difficult because I'm trying to say complicated things in as few words as possible.
Neil Diamond
29.
There's a mystery to writing, and you don't really know where most of it comes from.
Neil Diamond
30.
Maybe tonight, maybe tonight by the fire all alone you and I. Nothing around but the sound of heart and your sighs.
Neil Diamond
31.
Home's the most excellent place of all.
Neil Diamond
32.
Touch a man who can't walk up right, and that lame man, he's gonna fly.
Neil Diamond
33.
He aint heavy, he's my brother.
Neil Diamond
34.
I'm lucky. Hard work is the key, but luck plays a part.
Neil Diamond
35.
I am, I said to no one there and no one heard at all, not even a chair.
Neil Diamond
36.
I came back to performing with a different attitude about performing and myself. I wasn't expecting perfection any more, just hoping for an occasional inspiration.
Neil Diamond
37.
Songwritng is what I do.
Neil Diamond
38.
Being lost is worth the being found.
Neil Diamond
39.
I followed all life's pleasures wherever they would lead, but someone I can treasure is all I really need.
Neil Diamond
40.
I got worries by the ton, getting cancer's only one. Over taxed and alimonied, tired of eating fried baloney.
Neil Diamond
41.
September morn Do you remember how we danced that night away Two lovers playing scenes from some romantic play September morning still can make me feel this way.
Neil Diamond
42.
The man in between waits between the two, not hearing the lie and not seeing the true. Unknowing what is and denying what seems, and there he will sleep, the man in between.
Neil Diamond
43.
Melinda was mine 'til the time that I found her holding Jim, loving him.
Neil Diamond
44.
Well, I loved singing in the chorus, and there was some connection for me between gospel and choral music.
Neil Diamond
45.
My writing is different. I think it's better. I think it's deeper. But, strangely enough, it covers a lot of the old ground. Maybe it says it in a more sophisticated way ... but I [have written] about basically the same subjects over the years.
Neil Diamond
46.
Pride is the chief cause in the decline in the number of husbands and wives.
Neil Diamond
47.
I don't feel I have to write deep and meaningful songs; they can be light and meaningless. It has to do with the place I am in my life, a really good place.
Neil Diamond
48.
I may have a little bit of a talent for music, but I've learnt to tap into my own self when I write. When I put the drill bit inside my heart, sometimes I come up with something light and frothy, sometimes with something deep and painful, but it's great to connect with the audience.
Neil Diamond
49.
If it can affect me, if it has meaning to me, if I feel I can do it well, I will do it and record it and thats why I recorded these songs.
Neil Diamond
50.
Over the years, you grow up, you mature and you see things in a different way, and it's reflected in the writing.
Neil Diamond
