Way Quotes - Page 21

• Glen Campbell told me, 'Stay out of the way of a good song.' I think it's true. If a song's good, don't overdo it.

  Chris Isaak

  Song, Writing, Thinking

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• Anyone involved with songwriting will testify to the fact that each song, no matter how pure or from the heart, has its own story, its own peculiar way of getting written.

  C. Sigman

  Song, Writing, Heart

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• I had a dream that Louis Armstrong was playing the 'Swept Away' melody. I have no idea where it came from. But Louis Armstrong was playing it and singing the song to me. I woke up-it's a borrowed melody no doubt-and wrote it down. If I hear a song and I choose not to put it down, that's me neglecting to accept that song. I think there's a very spiritual and godly-type ting that happens, and it happens to way more people than we know. It's just that very few of us choose to engage it.

  Scott Avett

  Dream, Spiritual, Song

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• How to avoid cliche at the root of conception? Practice sincerity. If we've come by ... material honestly, through our own personal experience or imagination, we may rightly claim it as our own. ... The way to make material your own is to look for it in yourself. ... It should be a story that only you can tell, as only you can tell it.

  Peter Selgin

  Writing, Practice, Roots

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• Something like going to get the newspaper can increase your writing efficiency by taking you away from the material. When I'm doing other things, writing stuff will be swirling around in my head, and sometimes I'll see a new way into the material.

  Nathaniel Philbrick

  Writing, Stuff, Sometimes

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• Besides my fast and slooow songs, I further divide my work into three main song types: the ballad or story song, the variation on a theme (saying the same thing over and over and over again) song, and the weird song. It's important to have weird songs, but I find that a little weirdness goes a long way.

  David Massengill

  Song, Writing, Long

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• My writing just kind of exists out there in the air-it's all sort of intended as spoken, or sung, word. So, to commit them to the page...that way was kind of intimidating to me, yet intriguing, to try to reflect the rhythms and connotations and emotions that you can deliver, speaking-wise, on a page.

  Ani DiFranco

  Wise, Writing, Air

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• I wanted to be a singer, of course, but there was something about the songwriting, then and now, that is the most important thing. It's how I express myself, how I express how I see things. When I see people struggling with emotions and feelings and don't know how to put it down, I'm able to do that. It's really like a therapy, and it's like a buddy and a friend. It's a way out of a lot of things.

  Dolly Parton

  Struggle, Writing, People

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• Songs are like myths. Myths are useful because they allow you to cast yourself and your life and your own experience. And for some people, 'Fire and Rain' speaks to them in that way.

  James Taylor

  Song, Rain, Writing

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• My second husband and I were going through a bitter divorce, and I didn't have the money for a fancy-pants attorney. I didn't know how to fight, so I'd lie awake at night and think of ways to kill him. But I knew I'd get caught, so I decided to put it in a book and get paid for it! I always think it's odd that a whole career came out of that homicidal impulse.

  Sue Grafton

  Husband, Lying, Book

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• Kristofferson was writing what was really in his heart and saying it in ways we hadn't heard up till that point.

  Jeffrey Steele

  Writing, Heart, Heard

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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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• Writing is a way of living other lives. It is a way of expanding your life. It's not actually living a different life, it just means that you're hungry for life. There are so many things you want to do.

  Etgar Keret

  Writing, Mean, Different

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• I see God as a song-and-dance man. If I had my way, he'd be able to carry a tune, too. Preferably, one of mine.

  Kevin Kline

  Song, Writing, Men

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• It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it.

  Miles Davis

  Music, Hearing, Songwriting

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• Cause I shouldn't feel this way... Catch me I'm falling for you... and I don't know what to do.

  Toni Gonzaga

  Falling In Love, Falling For You, Causes

  Song: Catch Me I'm Falling

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• True perfection seems imperfect,
  yet it is perfectly itself.
  True fullness seems empty,
  yet it is fully present.
  True straightness seems crooked.
  True wisdom seems foolish.
  True art seems artless.
  The Master allows things to happen.
  She shapes events as they come.
  She steps out of the way
  and lets the Tao speak for itself.

  Laozi

  Art, Perfection, Steps

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• The practical man is the adventurer, the investigator, the believer in research, the asker of questions, the man who refuses to believe that perfection has been attained.... There is no thrill or joy in merely doing that which any one can do.... It is always safe to assume, not that the old way is wrong, but that there may be a better way.

  Henry Harrower

  Believe, Men, Perfection

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• I think there are certain ways that people are always themselves, but I do think people change

  Mike White

  Change, Thinking, People

  "HBO's 'Enlightened' Take On Modern Meditation". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.nhpr.org. October 10, 2011.

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• Professional marriage counselors agree that the most productive and mature way to deal with marital anger is to stomp dramatically from the room. You want to make your move before the opponent does, because the first person to stomp from the room receives valuable Argument Points that can be redeemed for exciting merchandise at the Marital Prize Redemption Center.

  Dave Barry

  Moving, Funny Marriage, Doe

  Dave Barry (2010). “Dave Barry Talks Back”, p.208, Crown Archetype

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• A lot of my writing is not terribly civilized. Sometimes I listen to songs by very smart writers who assume that the world is a civil place with certain formalities that people follow, but I don't see things that way. My own experience tells me that life is not like that. That's why I write the way I do.

  Suzanne Vega

  Song, Smart, Writing

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• The gateway to freedom...was somewhere close to New Orleans where most Africans were sorted through and sold. I had driven through New Orleans on tour and I'd been told my great grandfather had lived way back up in the woods among the evergreens in a log cabin. I revived the era with a song about a coloured boy named Johnny B. Goode. My first thought was to make his life follow as my own had come along, but I thought it would seem biased to white fans to say 'coloured boy' and changed it to 'country boy'.

  Chuck Berry

  Country, Song, Boys

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• The words to country songs are very earthy like the blues. They're not as dressed up and the people are very honest and say, 'Look, I miss you darlin', so I went out and got drunk in this bar.' That's the way you say it. Where in Tin Pan Alley they would say, 'Oh I missed you darling, so I went to this restaurant and I sat down and had a dinner for one.' That's cleaned up now, you see? But country and blues tells it like it is.

  Ray Charles

  Country, Song, Tin Pan Alley

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• I would sooner be robbed by a fan than a company. The fan may be broke and have but one choice. There is no excuse for the way the "songwriter" is robbed by everyone from the record company to the broadcaster, by the pure bottom line, greed. If it continues, sadly, in time, the music will suffer. It takes many many years to learn how to write a song properly. Songwriters will be forced to hit the road in order to make a decent living and, in my opinion, these two careers are related but not compatible.

  Mickey Newbury

  Song, Writing, Order

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• Do I start with the lyrics? No. Quite honestly, it's the opposite. I generally get the melody first - I kinda fiddle around on the guitar and work out a melody. The lyrics are there to flesh out the tone of the music. I've tried before to do things the other way around, but it never seems to work. Obviously, I spend a lot of time on my lyrics, I take them very seriously, but they're kinda secondary. Well, equal, maybe. I think sometimes that if you write a poem, it should remain as just a poem, just... words.

  Iron & Wine

  Writing, Thinking, Guitar

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