Songwriting Quotes - Page 32

• As a songwriter, if you can touch people and make them feel a little less alone in the world, then you've done your job.

  Tom Cochrane

  Jobs, People, Done

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• All songs are living ghosts. And long for a living voice

  Brendan Kennelly

  Song, Voice, Long

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• Learning an instrument isn't about becoming a star anymore than learning to swim means you want to become a haddock

  Nick Mason

  Stars, Mean, Swim

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• I write some crappy songs. ... but every once in a while I get just the right words put together for the right moment, and it feels like magic. There is no explaining the magic. It floats in and then just like that, it floats out. There's no amount of money that will buy magic. I've watched myself try to coax it, but it is only when I relax and totally allow magic to envelop me that it has ever been kind.

  Bonnie Baker

  Song, Writing, Magic

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• Solitude. It is way underrated in our world of writing. We stay busy. We act busy. We thrive on busy. The truth is there is a lot of beauty that lives in the solitude. Quiet is not the enemy. Quiet is necessary for brains to not self-destruct.

  Bonnie Baker

  Writing, Our World, Self

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• Life is so groovy when your record is hot.

  Ray Davies

  Hot, Records, Life Is

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• I wanted to understand things and then be free of them. I needed to learn how to telescope things, ideas. Things were too big to see all at once, like all the books in the library-everything laying around on all the tables. You might be able to put it all into one paragraph or into one verse of a song if you could get it right.

  Bob Dylan

  Song, Book, Ideas

  Bob Dylan (2011). “Chronicles”, p.59, Simon and Schuster

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• It is the haunted premises of longing that the true love song inhabits. It is a howl in the void, for love and for comfort and it lives on the lips of the child crying for his mother. It is the song of the lover in need of her loved one, the raving of the lunatic supplicant petitioning his God...The love song is the sound of our endeavors to become God-like, to rise up and above the earthbound and the mediocre.

  Nick Cave

  Mother, Song, Children

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• I can't tell one from the other:I find you or you find me?There was a time before we were born If someone asks, this is where I'll be.

  David Byrne

  Born, Find Me, Asks

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• Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear.

  Oliver Sacks

  Moving, Orange Juice, Inspirational Music

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• To me, songwriting is the backbone of Nashville. Looks can go, fads can go, but a good song lasts forever.

  Alan Jackson

  Song, Nashville, Forever

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• I think my songwriting might be a little more on the darker side maybe.

  Neko Case

  Thinking, Littles, Might

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• The music and the philosophy feed off of one another on a subconscious level, though I've never really integrated my academic teaching into songwriting. But what they have in common is that they're both ways to tap into the mysterious parts of our world.

  Steve Weinstein

  Philosophy, Teaching, Our World

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• Songwriting is actually a really great outlet. I kind of recommend it. You get to sum up whatever is going on in your life in a song, then perform it really passionately.

  Bridgit Mendler

  Song, Kind, Outlets

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• I think that songwriting is understood from an early age that was the priority to figure out first. Learn to write a good song, and then figure out who you are as an artist because, once you know how to write a good song, you can dress it in any kind of clothing.

  Lights

  Song, Writing, Artist

  Source: coogradio.com

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• I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Writing, Skeletons, Flesh

  The New York Times, January 22, 1978.

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• Wherever inspiration comes from, it's like I'll hear a melody and chords, almost a rough structure of the whole thing [song]. I'll just hear it and chase what's in my head. The rest comes from jamming with band, improvising, seeing what comes up as well. I'll come up with it off the top of my head, catch it, sing and hum, and if something is missing, just jam, and that's the [songwriting] process.

  Chris Wyse

  Song, Inspiration, Missing

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• Rock'n'roll is not red carpets and MySpace friends, rock'n'roll is dangerous and should piss people off

  Gerard Way

  Music, Rocks, People

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

  Laura Marling

  Outlets, Mediums, Bits

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• I feel happy about the songs I've written. I'm a great lover of the craft of songwriting, and I sure admire it in other people when I see it - past and present. I feel comfortable with what I have accomplished. I feel happy to be able to work in that environment, and that I have a lot of songs left to be written, somewhere.

  John Fogerty

  Song, Past, People

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

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• Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability.

  Barry Mann

  Successful, Ability, Innate

  "Q&A: Mann & Weil on surving as songwriters". Interview with Steve Sailer, www.upi.com. July 25, 2002.

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• I enjoy songwriting. It's slow-motion improvising.

  Julian Casablancas

  Slow Motion, Enjoy, Improvising

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• 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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• Self-discovery in songwriting, bringing something forth that's instructive to yourself - some of the best songs that you will ever write are the ones where you didn't have to think about any of that stuff, but nonetheless that's what's happening in the song.

  Jackson Browne

  Music, Song, Writing

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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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