Songwriting Quotes

Most things I worry about never happen anyway.

You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it.

If I don't have an outlet in which to express myself...throug h songwriting or other mediums...I get a bit jittery.

The best songwriting comes from being as creative as you can and editing it down to the good bits, essentially.

I don't work at being ordinary.

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

When I was 15, all I knew was that I had to be somebody and that I could be somebody. So I exploited the only thing I knew, which was singing and songwriting.

There's only two kinds of music: the blues and zippety doo-dah.

If I knew where good songs came from, I'd go there more often.

I see songwriting as having to do with experience, and the more you've experienced, the better it is. But it has to be tempered, and you just must let your imagination run.

Performing is the easiest part of what I do, and songwriting is the hardest.

Great classic music that I've been turned on to has not only inspired and influenced me, but it has had an effect on my songwriting.

You write a hit the same way you write a flop.

Songwriting is my gift from God

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed.

Speak in extremes, it'll save you time.

All is fair in love and songwriting.

The secret of a great melody is a secret.

I love songwriting. It's second to my love for singing in how I express myself.

I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.

Write about the truth. If you write about the truth, somebody's living that. Not just somebody, there's a lot of people.

Well, everything about singing, I learned from busking. Everything I learned about songwriting, I learned from busking.

Pop music really is a love and a joy and a science [of songwriting].

Songwriting never gets old. There's always stuff to write about.

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

Much of songwriting is simply a mystery.

Songwriting is the cheapest psychiatrist I know.

I don't like to dwell on the past.

It's the damage that we do and never know. It's the words that we don't say that scare me so.

Usually the things that happen in my life are an easy trigger for songwriting.

But this is pretty new for me, both songwriting and singing.

Isolation is a big part of songwriting.

I love, love, love songwriting. It's like the most therapeutic thing in the world.

You're gonna have to learn to get out there in front of those cameras and hold your head up. Take charge when you're singing.

I've come to recognize songwriting as something that I do, and I want to be good at that. At that craft, if you like. I want to practice it.

A lot of what has pushed me forward is desire, and I have expressed that in my songwriting - perhaps because it's safer!

I wasn't born with a natural talent for songwriting.

There's a lot of personal stuff that can go into songwriting but there's also a lot of dramatization and fictionalization. You have to do that to make a good song.

I don't think you can ever please all audiences.

It's not that I have resisted songwriting, it's just not something I felt I have had to do. I've just not woken up and thought, I must do this. But I have often heard music that I have instantly felt 'I have to sing that song'

Music really does just boil down to basically, essentially songwriting chords and melodies.

Songwriting never feels like it's me doing anything consciously except for becoming aware somehow that it's time to let something out, or let something in, depending on how you look at it.

A lot of people pretty much only listen to the chorus.

Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.

Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability.

For me, in songwriting, I have a route I can take. Maybe there's some forks, I can go this way, this way. But I know those roads. I still have the experience behind me.

Once I went into songwriting, I figured I had to - I couldn't be a hellfire rock 'n' roller. But I could write hellfire lyrics.

Not to dismiss Gershwin, but Gershwin is the chip; Ellington was the block.

I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm damn well gonna do it!

Being so honest in my writing is cathartic.