Songwriting Quotes - Page 31

• You can't manufacture inspiration, so a lot of it is still a waiting game for me. There's still a lot of mystery to songwriting. I don't have a method that I can go back to - they either come or they don't.

  Conor Oberst

  Inspiration, Games, Waiting

  "Bright eyes slim down with single LP, fatten up with loads of Collabos" by Chris Harris, www.mtv.com. February 1, 2007.

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• I might lie a lot but never in my lyrics.

  Courtney Love

  Lying, Reality, Might

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• All is fair in love and songwriting.

  Norah Jones

  Fairs

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• The rule of songwriting: say what you want to say, say it again, say it a different way, then say it again.

  Hunter Hayes

  Different, Want, Way

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• 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.

  Norah Jones

  Song, Stuff, Personal Stuff

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• My songs are basically my diaries. Some of my best songwriting has come out of time when I've been going through a personal nightmare.

  Gwen Stefani

  Music, Song, Diaries

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

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• Food is music to the body, music is food to the heart.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Heart, Body, Shantaram

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• Songwriters write songs, but they really belong to the listener.

  Jimmy Buffett

  Song, Writing, Listeners

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• I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Music, Morning, Piano

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• With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I'm teeming with the drive to write.

  Alanis Morissette

  Live Life, Writing, Studios

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• What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people’s hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you’re playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack.

  Keith Richards

  Running, Song, Taken

  Keith Richards (2010). “Life”, p.193, Hachette UK

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• I've gone through the village of my songwriting and my artistry, and I've gone through lots of different phases, including one where it has been very quiet and abandoned me for a few years.

  Carly Simon

  Years, Gone, Village

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• Songwriting's a weird game.

  Keith Richards

  Games

  "The Survivors Q&A: Keith Richards". www.gq.com. October 19, 2011.

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• Being so honest in my writing is cathartic.

  Brian Molko

  Writing, Honest, Cathartic

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• The downside of videos is that it will put my vision in front of other people, so they might not get the chance to create their own.

  Carole King

  People, Vision, Video

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• I don't think you get to good writing unless you expose yourself and your feelings. Deep songs don't come from the surface; they come from the deep down. The poetry and the songs that you are suppose to write, I believe are in your heart.

  Judy Collins

  Song, Believe, Writing

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• There's two or three kids out there trying to make good music, and the rest of them sound like it's been strained through some kind of white toast or something. It all sounds just too neat and perfect, with no surprise to it at all. No story, no nothing. It's like building cars, like an assembly line. It doesn't sound like anything that came from a guitar.

  Merle Haggard

  Kids, Guitar, Two

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• I sit down with a guitar player and if there's a situation I feel strongly about, or a guy that I've been thinking about or if I'm mad at a guy, it comes out.

  Avril Lavigne

  Player, Thinking, Guitar

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• Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they're trying to say with jazz. You don't need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

  Oscar Peterson

  Music, Philosophical, Play

  FaceBook post by Oscar Peterson from Mar 10, 2015

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• If after two weeks you still can't write your middle-eight, the best course of action is to see a psychiatrist

  Ray Davies

  Writing, Eight, Two

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• Sinclair Lewis was asked one time to give a talk to class of students about writing. When he got there he asked the class, Do you people want to be writers?and they all said yes. Then Lewis said, Why the hell aren't you at home writing?

  Tom T. Hall

  Home, Writing, Class

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• What happens is, especially when I was writing for my band, Creedence, and it's the way I write now, I go into "guitar lick" mode. When I do, it sort of leads into a real song. I'd say to myself, your songwriting is coming up with a guitar lick, and the rest is easy!

  John Fogerty

  Song, Real, Writing

  Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. November 27, 2007.

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• Wonderful songwriting, beautiful production, and deeply rooted in what makes American Roots Music great: Deep Southern Pain. It's the hurt that brings the songs, and it's the songs that heal the hurt. Jonathan's songs bring us there, and back. Check this record out, it's a good 'un.

  Mary Gauthier

  Beautiful, Song, Hurt

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• Put your faith in God and confidence in yourself.

  Alberta Hunter

  Faith In God, Confidence In Yourself

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• A lot of the great songwriters in history have been collaborators, with a separate lyricist.

  Mike Gordon

  Singer-songwriters, Collaborators, Has Beens

  Interview with Brian Feller, phish.net. April 18, 1993.

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