Song Quotes

The curious beauty of African music is that it uplifts even as it tells a sad tale. You may be poor, you may have only a ramshackle house, you may have lost your job, but that song gives you hope.

Keep moving, for it may well be that the greatest song has not yet been sung, the greatest book has not been written, the highest mountain has not been climbed.

I just like a good, sad song. The sadder, the better. It moves me.

I think the more the listener can contribute to the song, the better; the more they become part of the song, and they fill in the blanks. Rather than tell them everything, you save your details for things that exist. Like what color the ashtray is. How far away the doorway was. So when you're talking about intangible things like emotions, the listener can fill in the blanks and you just draw the foundation.

Sam Stone' is a song about futility.

Because of my song 'Sam Stone,' a lot of people thought I was interested in writing protest songs. Writing protest songs always struck me as patting yourself on the back.

People would always tell me about minor chords - when you're writing a song, to put a minor chord in. For me, it's like doom, you know. You know somebody's gonna be extremely sick or die if there's a character in the song.

When I was writing the song, I thought that these people have entire lives in there. They're not writers, but they all have stories to tell. Some are very, very down deeper than others.

I knew Fred since I was 14 and was first going to the Old Town School, Fred used to work part-time in the store. Every time I wrote a song Fred would turn on his really good high-class tape recorder, reel-to-reel, and record it. So he's got recordings of me on guitar singing all my songs in his apartment long before I ever recorded for a recording company. I never found out what happened to the tapes.

If there had been a tornado or something that took the town, it would've been the same song.

I started singing rhythmically, and now I'm learning from Otis Redding to push a song instead of just sliding over it.

I just wrote one song at a time. Kinda like an alcoholic. One day at a time.

A true friend is someone who is always there during the ups and downs, I actually have a song called 'True Friend'.

Sorry I did not link my song in that tweet to make it about me it's just that the song is literally about this disgusting situation and speaks more eloquently than I can on Twitter.

Instinct taught me 20 years ago to pace a song or a concert performance. That translates into pacing a story, pleasing a reading audience.

Montserrat Caballé is sensational. She has that same kind of emotion as Aretha Franklin. The way she delivers a song is so very natural. It's a very different gift.

We Are The Champions' is the most egotistical and arrogant song I've ever written. I was thinking about football when I wrote it.

I wanted a participation song, something the fans could latch on to. It was aimed at the masses. I wanted to write something that everyone could sing along to, like a football chant. And at the same time, I thought it would be nice to have a winning song that's meant for everybody. It worked a treat.

We're fussy and finicky and have very high standards. If a song can't be done properly, we'd rather it isn't done at all.

It's lovely to hear that We Are The Champions is a song that's been taken up by, you know, football fans 'cause that's a winners' song which keeps coming back.