Writing Quotes

As far as songwriting, my inspirations came from love, life and death, and viewing other people's situations.

I think the moment you start trying to please a fan base is when you start going downhill. I'm going to always, always write about what I want, even if it doesn't necessarily cater to most of them.

I think people appreciate a songwriter who shows different sides. The whole angst thing is cool, but if that's all you've got, it's just boring. Everything I write, whether it's happy or sad, has a sense of humor to it.

I wish I could write easily. I'm one of those guys who's visited by the muse when things are dire.

In writing songs I've learned as much from Cézanne as I have from Woody Guthrie.

You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist.

Sometimes I might shift paradigms within the same song, but then that structure also has its own rules. And I combine them both, see what works and what doesn't. My range is limited. Some formulas are too complex and I don't want anything to do with them.

Folk musicians, blues musicians did write a lot of songs about the "Titanic". That's what I feel I'm best at, being a folk musician or a blue musician, so in my mind it's there to be done. If you're a folk singer, blues singer, rock & roll singer, whatever, in that realm, you oughta write a song about the "Titanic", because that's the bar you have to pass.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That's always been the easy way. It's not that it's so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it's just that there's nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

My sense of rhyme used to be more involved in my songwriting than it is... Still staying in the unconscious frame of mind, you can pull yourself out and throw up two rhymes first and work it back. You get the rhymes first and work it back and then see if you can make it make sense in another kind of way. You can still stay in the unconscious frame of mind to pull it off, which is the state of mind you have to be in anyway.

A song is like a dream, and you have to make it come true. They're like strange countries that you have to enter. You can write a song anywhere, in a railroad compartment, on a boat, on horseback -- it helps to be moving. Sometimes people who have the greatest talent for writing songs never write any because they are not moving.

A BIG PART OF SONGWRITING, like all writing, is editing-distilling thought down to essentials. Novice writers often hide behind filigree. In many cases the artistry is in what is unsaid. As the old saying goes, an iceberg moves gracefully because most of it is beneath the surface.

When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you're writing about at the time.

You have to be able to communicate in life and probably schools underemphasize that. If you can't talk to people or write, you're giving up your potential.

There is nothing like writing to force you to think and get your thoughts straight.

I'm a Loser,' 'Help,' 'Strawberry Fields,' they are all personal records. I always wrote about me when I could. I didn't really enjoy writing third person songs about people who lived in concrete flats and things like that. I like first person music. But because of my hang-ups and many other things; I would only now and then specifically write about me.

Each song is a child I nourish and give my love to. But even if you have never written a song, your life is a song. How can it not be?

The key to being a wonderful writer is not to write. You just get out of the way, leave room for God to walk in the room, and when I write something that I know is right, I get on my knees and say, 'Thank You.

Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don't get me.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it's so drawn from my own life and my own stories.