Songwriting Quotes
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All the characters on the album are inside me, though none are me. They are sides of me or who I was.
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Songwriting never gets old. There's always stuff to write about.
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I think it was Tommy who told me, 'When your song is called 'XYZ' or whatever, every line has got to make sense against your title.' He showed me little methods of proving to yourself whether the line belongs, and ways of finding out whether you were able to get more out of a line if you tried.
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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.
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We have a camp up in the Adirondacks with no electricity, and I find that it's one of the most fertile places for me as far as songwriting because there isn't much to do.
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It just seems like musicians want to sell a few records and put out a perfume line, and I think it's so sad that there are so many musicians who don't want to change the world.
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[The publication of his first poem] was wonderful ... but it taught me early on that the only thing that really matters is writing the next poem. Publication is best seen as a happy accident.
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I swear I have at least one good song idea a day. But if I don't get pen to paper in ten seconds, it's gone forever.
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I always have to remember that I am the narrator, but it doesn't have to be about me. A lot of songwriting is about trying to use what part of me is valid in telling the story. I don't want to overcook it, you know? Sometimes it seems that's really where the work is.
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I could never teach a class on songwriting. I'd tell them to goof off and find a good hideout.
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Songwriting is a very frustrating art form. You have to get on tape exactly what's playing inside your head...
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I don't enjoy songwriting.
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Back then, the business depended on bohemians. ... They needed Kristofferson and Roger Miller ..It was the tail end of something...the last Tin Pan Alley. ...and we were the night shift! They gave us keys, because they knew the best songs weren't written in daylight.... We got our keys taken away several times...me and Guy Clark.
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I've used songwriting as a tool, I've used it as a way of being able to talk about how I feel.
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Songwriting's never been a natural art for me; it's always been a bit of a struggle.
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I've done so much songwriting and I know how to do it.
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I think most of the work of songwriting is thinking of great phrases - I'm addicted, always on the hunt for a really great phrase.
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Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed to sleep. It's always in the middle of the night, or you're half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them...
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I don't believe that songwriting has to be profound, but I truly believe that it's a crime for you to go outta your way for it not to be.
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What songwriting does better than almost anything is empathy - it's incredibly empathetic. The reason people sat around in bars when they were bummed out and listened to country songs is because it made them feel better in the long run.
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I'm from the generation that's always been recording, from the very beginning. I learned to play the guitar on the four-track. I started listening to music at a time when people were doing recording at home, when the discussion about songwriting correlated to the discussion about producing and engineering. I think that's a description of my generation.
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Step out of your comfort zone to get a feel for how things are done differently. Don’t take the easy way out with songwriting. Be very patient with yourself and others.
