Write Quotes
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You can tell all our songs come from us and from our artists, the people we write with and travel with.
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I didn't start running because somebody asked me to become a runner. Just like I didn't become a novelist because someone asked me to. One day, out of the blue, I wanted to write a novel. And one day, out of the blue, I started to run-simply because I wanted to. I've always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I'm wrong, but I won't change.
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When I sit down to write, I consider myself an artist.
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That's just a part of your soul. I couldn't be complacent about that no matter how much I wanted to. Sometimes thinking I have to write songs for an album feels like I have to study for an exam. Then as soon as I start writing I remember how much I love the process. We both do.
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There may be a point where I may decide to write an autobiography.
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I say I write extrapolations. I look at data points and ask what the world could look like.
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And if you're horrible to me I'm going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That's how I operate.
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You live through stuff, and it affects the way you feel about the world, and you write about it.
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I do not write with ease, nor am I ever pleased with anything I write. And so I rewrite.
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I love the novels of Didion and Bret Ellis and consider them L.A. writers because they write about L.A.
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All this is rather pretentious and fey to even talk about, but Flannery O'Connor sat down to write stories. The rest of us, some of us, don't have that kind of wit and genius. We don't do that. We sit down and have some accidents.
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I came to write after several mini careers. I did live theatre, managed a cosmetics store and was a local television personality.
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I have this rule: It's like, if you write an amazing, cool song that you mean and then you go put your leather pants on and sing it in front of people; that's OK. But if you put your leather pants on and stand in front of the mirror and go, "Ok, I've got to write a song to fit these pants," then you're in trouble.
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I've been writing for years, you know, and when I get to a particular place, city, or different locale, I find myself first of all being challenged by those that love me to write more.
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If I didn't write, I'd be like a duvet cover; I have no other marketable skills.
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For me, the guitar was just a tool to make songs. I started when I was 10 - I learned what I had to learn to get my ideas across. I always felt I was a weak guitar player, but now I realize with the finger-picking stuff, I actually know how to do what I do with my songs, but I couldn't step in and be an overall guitar player. But my guitar playing has always been driven by the need to write songs.
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National identity is a motion. It's something you're inside, you don't get what's happening, you can't see it from above. And that's where you have to write. You can't see what's happening now or what's going to happen, so you just dive into it and write.
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I don't go into any album with pressing issues. I just try to write songs.
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Nobody has to give me permission to write.
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Writing a first novel was an arduous crash course. I learned so much in the six years it took me to write it, mostly technical things pertaining to craft.
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Anyone who says, “Here’s my address, write me a poem,” deserves something in reply. So I’ll tell you a secret instead: poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes, they are sleeping. They are the shadows drifting across our ceilings the moment before we wake up. What we have to do is live in a way that lets us find them.
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I don't write music for critics or hipsters. I write for me.
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When I write, I try to think back to what I was afraid of or what was scary to me, and try to put those feelings into books.
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It's hard to write new stuff when the songs you have written before are still changing and evolving. It would be like building something when the foundations there are not really solid.
