Songs Quotes

Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savour their songs. I again realized that we were not different people with separate languages; we were one people, with different tongues.

God has wrought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations. Jazz speaks for life.

It's kind of limiting using your intellect to write songs like Brown Sugar, isn't it? The only thing I'm really interested in is comparative religion and ancient history.

Even when I was a mailman. That job required no great skill, so once you got it down, you had a lot of free time to daydream and make up songs.

Especially when you've got your own mail route, day after day, it was an easy place to write. It was like going to a library with no books. You're afforded to just go do your job, and you don't really even have to think about it. You know you're on the right street and you're at the right house, and you're putting the mail in the right box. That's where I wrote a lot of the early songs, walking on the mail route.

Even when I was coming up in the singer-songwriter ranks during the early '70s, I thought that people who were stylists and stuff shoulda still been up on the pedestal. I mean, it's fine to recognize people who write songs, but it kinda got out of hand, you know?

In my songs, I try to look through someone else's eyes, and I want to give the audience a feeling more than a message.

I just tried to come up with some honest songs. What I was writing about was real plain stuff that I wasn't sure was going to be interesting to other people. But I guess it was...I've never had any discipline whatsoever. I just wait on a song like I was waiting for lightning to strike. And eventually-usually sometime around 3 in the morning-I'll have a good idea. By the time the sun comes up, hopefully, I'll have a decent song.

I don't force it. If you don't have an idea and you don't hear anything going over and over in your head, don't sit down and try to write a song. You know, go mow the lawn...My songs speak for themselves.

It's the way I like to work for these kinds of songs [like "Peace Trail"]. It was the right time of the month; everything was looking good.

Those minutes that I'm on stage are the best! Being there and looking at the crowd and seeing their faces, hearing them sing the positive words from the songs.

There are so many self-references - it's always me in the songs talking about being in the song, like a character in a film that knows he's a character in a film.

Songs like 'Radioactive' by Imagine Dragons, it might as well be called 'Pikachu Banana.' It's nothingness.

I've always been trying to write songs like Lightfoot. A song of mine like 'Come Monday' is a direct result of me trying to write a Gordon Lightfoot song.

Life is a journey that's measured not in miles or years but in experiences, and the route your life takes is built not of roads but of songs.

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

There's something missing in the music industry today... and it's music. Songs you hear don't last, it's just product fed to you by the industry.

I was always keen to do a solo album. I just wanted it to be the right time and the right place so that I could actually work properly on the songs that I wanted to do before I got too old.

I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype, and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs.

I think Queen songs are pure escapism, like going to see a good film - after that, they can go away and say that was great, and go back to their problems. I don't want to change the world with our music. There are no hidden messages in our songs, except for some of Brian's.