Tom Petty Quotes

Songwriting ability is a gift. After a while, you come to realize, "I've really been blessed. I can write these things and it makes me happy, and it makes millions of people happy." It's an obligation, it's bigger than you. It's the only true magic I know. It's not pulling a rabbit out of a hat; it's real. It's your soul floating out to theirs.

Tom Petty Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

• Ability
• Gift
• Songwriting

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• The decathlon includes ten separate events and they all matter. You can't work on just one of them.

  

  Dan O'Brien
  • Work
  • You
  • Events

• I try to give the appearance that I have it all together and that I know what I'm talking about, but at the end of the day, I think I might be full of crap.

  

  Laura Benanti
  • Together
  • Day
  • End

• I was just making music in my bedroom. I never wanted to be onstage.

  

  Oliver Sim The xx
  • Music
  • Never
  • Bedroom

• The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

  

  Carl Jung
  • Man
  • Healthy
  • Torture

• I can remember the first time I ever recorded my vocals on to a beat. Cat Coore from Third World - a legendary Jamaican band - had a little demo set up at his house. I'm very good friends with his eldest son, Shiah, who plays with me now. So we were rhyming over a track by the dancehall artist Peter Metro. I've still got it somewhere.

  

  Damian Marley
  • Up
  • Time
  • World

• I always put my fantasies in the realm of goals.

  

  O. J. Simpson
  • Always
  • Goals
  • Put

• I had these experiences as a kid; I remember certain things happening in school that were horrifying that I would see, certain things of violence or certain things of cruelty, but around that, something might happen afterwards to cause everyone to laugh, and that always blew me away.

  

  Harmony Korine
  • School
  • Remember
  • Violence

• You've got to keep your eye on the prize and do what you love to do.

  

  Taylor Lautner
  • Love
  • Keep
  • Prize

• Network TV is such a difficult, competitive landscape.

  

  Ed Weeks
  • Difficult
  • Landscape
  • TV

• One of the great things about young people is that they do question, that they do care deeply about justice, and they they have open minds.

  

  Zack de la Rocha Rage Against the Machine
  • People
  • Great
  • Question

• If you spend 72 hours in a place you've never been, talking to people whose language you don't speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don't understand, and you come back as the world's biggest know-it-all, you're a reporter. Either that or you're President Obama.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • People
  • World
  • Political

• I think that what happens for many Christians is, they accept their particular faith, they accept it to be true, and they stop examining it. Consequently, because it's already accepted to be true, they don't examine other people's faiths... That, I think, is not healthy for a person of any faith.

  

  Adam Hamilton
  • People
  • True
  • Think

• I felt that a number of people might have questioned my loyalty, but I continue to be a patriotic American.

  

  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
  • People
  • American
  • Loyalty

• In the spring of 1993, I married Beverly and moved to the woods. This is something I could never have imagined myself doing.

  

  Floyd Skloot
  • Myself
  • Doing
  • Spring

• Of course, a movie is in constant flux.

  

  W. D. Richter
  • Movie
  • Course
  • Constant

• There is always a mix of apprehension and excitement before you try songs out on a new audience.

  

  Dan Reynolds Imagine Dragons
  • Always
  • Audience
  • Try

• I did some acting in high school, I knew I really liked it.

  

  Rachel Dratch
  • School
  • High
  • Acting

• You get to a new school, and you're the new guy, or you're the foreigner, or you're the guy with the funny accent. That first day at school was a whole new opportunity to create a new persona.

  

  Edgar Ramirez
  • School
  • Guy
  • Opportunity

• I have heard that Tiberius used to say that that man was ridiculous, who after sixth years, appealed to a physician.

  

  Plutarch
  • Man
  • Physician
  • Tiberius

• Anger. Control your anger. If you hold anger toward others, they have control over you.Your opponent can dominate and defeat you if you allow him to get you irritated.

  

  Miyamoto Musashi
  • Negativity
  • Opponents
  • Irritated

• I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • God
  • Think
  • Man

• So, for me, working with larger companies has often been very satisfying, precisely because of the ability of bringing critical mass to bear on a given effort.

  

  Vint Cerf
  • Effort
  • Company
  • Ability

• Songwriting ability is a gift. After a while, you come to realize, "I've really been blessed. I can write these things and it makes me happy, and it makes millions of people happy." It's an obligation, it's bigger than you. It's the only true magic I know. It's not pulling a rabbit out of a hat; it's real. It's your soul floating out to theirs.

  

  Tom Petty Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
  • Ability
  • Gift
  • Songwriting