Song Quotes

Falling in love is awesome, but I'm never drawn to happy songs per se, so whenever you sit down to write a heartbreak song and you're happily in love, it's like, 'OK, now I have to go back to a sad place to get something good.'

Between each album I try to gain a new insight that I didn't have before and perhaps write a song about something that I've written about before, but from a fresh viewpoint.

As a guitar player, it's harder for me to impress somebody than it is to write a song that they like.

You know when I really realized like "wow" what a gift this is was when I sang at camp and a girl wrote me a letter and said the song that I sung kept her from committing suicide.

In a way song writing can almost be detrimental, because suddenly you find an outlet that is a kind of cheating. You don't need to have direct communication. You can say, 'I can't describe it to you, but I will record it and send it to you.'

As an artist, you never want to write the same song again, you always want to challenge yourself to writing in a different way.

In my opinion, I think sarcasm and humor in a song, without turning it into a novelty song, is really charming.

I didn't write this song. Someone was talking in a room. I just wrote down everything they said.

I'm not a drama person, but when you can make a movie in song form in three-and-a-half minutes, it's surreal.

I think what people are attracted to about me, if anything, is my passion. People got exposed to my passion through music and song first.

The song This Kiss was definitely my breakthrough song. After that, Breathe was my breakthrough album.

That's a big gift when people say to you that a song helped them or brought them to some place in their life where they needed to be.

I aim my arrangements at what will fit and colorfully frame the song in the best way possible.

Three chords and the truth - that's what a country song is.

Where does a man get inspiration to write a song like that? Well, he gets it from the landlady once a month.

When you have a kid and people go, 'What a beautiful child,' it's the same kind of reaction when you play a song that people recognize and love.

I write songs because I have to write them, and if I didn't I'd be doing some other kind of music that didn't require a song.

A lot of Woody Guthrie's songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song.

It's not just a revue where one song is done, then another. There are concepts and ideas at work.

It's always interesting - how do you actually convey thought through song? We're used to the convention on stage. In film, we used to be used to it, and now sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. You need to be fresh and really look at the material.

Very rarely is there any confusion as to when a painting or a song is finished. You just know when it's done.

Larry only ever wrote one song, and he wrote that with Tony Kaye, I think it was, from Yes.

Even if it was a difficult operation to copy a song, it only takes one person to do it. After that the spread of the song via the Internet or other means of propagation is only limited by the honesty of the users.

Then all of a sudden, Quentin Tarantino comes along and puts a song from 40 years ago in one of his films and they've suddenly discovered you. That was a real gift that Quentin gave me.

We play a hip-hop song and suddenly 25 people on the left jump up and put their hands in the air; then you play Lost Cause and they're like, I don't know about this one.

This is the way I wanna die. Torn apart by angry fans who want me to play a different song.

As I've gone along, I felt like I was discovering an aspect of my voice that I didn't know was there: an ability to interpret a song in a way that makes it more accessible.

If a musician wants to be an actor, everyone thinks that's pretty cool. But if an actor wants to play a song, even if they've been doing it for 40 years, that's bad news.

Flower was a good metaphor for growth. The song is obviously about sexual responsibility, so that was the main metaphor. Also, it's like knowing who someone has been and remembering and appreciating that, but really appreciating what they are now even more.

The whole industry evolves around a great song.