Quotes by Songwriters - Page 24

Let me remind you of what got me this far, picture me quitting, now draw a circle around it and put a line through it, sl#t!
Eminem
I couldn't do no yodelin', so I turned to howlin'. And it's done me just fine.
Howlin' Wolf
As much as I would really like to have saved myself heartache, embarrassment or gossip, I also know that my biggest mistakes have turned into my best lessons. And sometimes my greatest career triumphs. If my life had been turbulence-free, maybe my music would be beige, maybe the stadiums wouldn’t be full and the mantle would be a little more empty.
Taylor Swift
You have to be uncomfortable in order to be successful, in some ways. If you stay in your comfort zone! You would never do the things that you need to do.
Lights Poxlietner
People can change anything they want to, and that means everything in the world.
Joe Strummer
Goodness without knowledge... is weak and feeble, yet knowledge without goodness is dangerous.... Both united form the noblest character and lay the surest foundation of usefulness to mankind. Many men went a walking and many crippled men, did not.
John Phillips
The purpose of collecting so much information can only be power.
Nick Drake
Human knowledge consists not only of libraries of parchment and ink - it is also comprised of the volumes of knowledge that are written on the human heart, chiselled on the human soul, and engraved on the human psyche.
Michael Jackson
The God I believe in isn't short on cash, mister.
Bono
Religion is for those who are scared of hell, and spirituality is for those who have been there.
Bonnie Raitt
Thank you for this precious day,These gifts you give to me,My heart so full of love for you,Sings praise for all I see,Oh, sing, for every mother's love,For every childhood tear,Oh, sing, for all the stars above,The peace beyond all fear
John Denver
I have always been resistant to doctrine, and any spirituality I had experienced thus far in my life had been much more abstract and not aligned with any recognized religion. For me, the most trustworthy vehicle for spirituality had always proven to be music. It cannot be manipulated, or politicized, and when it is, that becomes immediately obvious.
Eric Clapton
We're starting our own religion at last. The Order of Frisbeetarians. We believe that when you die, your soul ascends to a rooftop and you can never get it back.
Bono
God, come down, if you're really there -Well, you're the one who claims to care!
Morrissey
…Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I don't know what will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. We're more popular than Jesus now. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
John Lennon
I wasn't saying whatever they're saying I was saying. I'm sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologize if that will make you happy. I still don't know quite what I've done. I've tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then OK, I'm sorry.
John Lennon
Christians are hard to tolerate I don’t know how Jesus does it
Bono
Imagine there's no countriesIt isn't hard to doNothing to kill or die forAnd no religion tooImagine all the peopleLiving life in peaceYou may say that I'm a dreamerBut I'm not the only oneI hope someday you'll join usAnd the world will be as one
John Lennon
I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas.
Johnny Cash
Believe in everything, just in case.
Camila Cabello
One night I was layin' down,I heard Papa talkin' to Mama,I heard Papa say to let that boy boogie-woogie.'Cause it's in him and it's got to come out.
John Lee Hooker
I make music for ears, not eyes
Adele
Life's not the breaths you take, but the moments that take your breath away.
George Strait
There's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream.
Thomas Moore
Be With Me In The Phases Of My Work Because My Brain Feels Like It Has Been Whipped And I Yearn To Make A Small Perfect Thing Which Will Live In Your Morning Like Curious Static Through A President's Elegy Or A Nude Hunchback Acquiring A Tan On The Crowded Oily Beach.
Leonard Cohen
I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand,that Joplin had the last drunken throat,that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.
Patti Smith
until the end of the world,all whys will be answered,but now,you can only ask!
Bob Marley
If you had started doing anything two weeks ago, by today you would have been two weeks better at it.
John Mayer
Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon.
Paul Brandt
Every time you go in, it's like starting over. You don't know how you did the other records. You're learning all over. It's some weird musician amnesia, or maybe the road wipes it out.
Beck
IntoxicatedWith the madnessI'm in love withMy sadnessBullshit beggars, enchanted kingdomFashion victims through their charcoaled teeth
Billy Corgan
A writer or any artist can’t expect to be embraced by the people. I've done records where it seemed like no one listened to them. You write poetry books that maybe 50 people read. And you just keep doing your work because you have to, because it’s your calling.But it’s beautiful to be embraced by the people.Some people have said to me, “Well, don’t you think that kind of success spoils one as an artist? If you’re a punk rocker, you don’t want to have a hit record…”And I say to them, “Fuck you!” One does their work for the people. And the more people you can touch, the more wonderful it is. You don’t do your work and say, “I only want the cool people to read it.” You want everyone to be transported, or hopefully inspired by it.When I was really young, William Burroughs told me, “Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises. Don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work. And make the right choices and protect your work. And if you can build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency.
Patti Smith
If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.
Billie Holiday
All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland.
Jimi Hendrix
Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.
Patti Smith
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's really a stupid thing to want to do.
Elvis Costello
Success is not what I've done compared with what others have done. Success is what I've done compared with what God has called me to do.
Lecrae Moore
You could say I lost my faith in science and progressYou could say I lost my belief in the holy ChurchYou could say I lost my sense of directionYou could say all of this and worse, ...Some would say I was a lost man in a lost worldYou could say I lost my faith in the people on TVYou could say I'd lost my belief in our politiciansThey all seemed like game show hosts to me...I never saw no miracle of scienceThat didn't go from a blessing to a curseI never saw no military solutionThat didn't always end up as something worse--Excerpts from "If I Ever Lose My Faith In You
Sting
We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world.
Patti Smith
Your faith was strong, but you needed proof...
Leonard Cohen
Without the voice of reason, every faith is its own curse.")
Sting
Não estatize meus sentimentos. Pra seu governo, o meu estado é independente.
Renato Russo
I walk through the old yellow sunlightto get to my kitchen tablethe poem about melying there with the booksin which I am listedamong the dead and future Dylans
Leonard Cohen
Old age doth in sharp pains abound;We are belabored by the gout,Our blindness is a dark profound,Our deafness each one laughs about.Then reason's light with falling rayDoth but a trembling flicker cast.Honor to age, ye children pay!Alas! my fifty years are past!
Pierre-Jean de Béranger
The journey back is always longer than the forward run.
Rod McKuen
How do you knowyou're a girl?I'm wearing a frock.And if you take it off?I get cold, so I putit back on.If I was a boy, I don't know what I'd do.
Ivor Cutler
At first first nothing will happen to usand later on it will happen to us again.
Leonard Cohen
The future says:Dear mortals;I know you are busy with your colourful lives;I have no wish to waste the little time that remainsOn arguments and heated debates;But before I can appearPlease, close your eyes, sit stillAnd listen carefullyTo what I am about to say;I haven't happened yet, but I will.I can't pretend it's going to beBusiness as usual.Things are going to change.I'm going to be unrecognisable.Please, don't open your eyes, not yet.I'm not trying to frighten you.All I ask is that you think of meNot as a wish or a nightmare, but as a storyYou have to tell yourselves -Not with an endingIn which everyone lives happily ever after,Or a B-movie apocalypse,But maybe starting with the line'To be continued...'And see what happens next.Remember this; I am notWritten in stoneBut in time - So please don't shrug and sayWhat can we do?It's too late, etc, etc, etc.Dear mortals,You are such strange creaturesWith your greed and your kindness,And your hearts like broken toys;You carry fear with you everywhereLike a tiny godIn its box of shadows.You love festivals and musicAnd good food.You lie to yourselvesBecause you're afraid of the dark.But the truth is: you are in my handsAnd I am in yours.We are in this together,Face to face and eye to eye;We're made for each other.Now those of you who are still here;Open your eyes and tell me what you see.
Nick Drake
There's no retirement for an artist,its your way of living so theres no end to it.
Bono
Well in case you failed to notice,In case you failed to see,This is my heart bleeding before you,This is me down on my kneesThese foolish games are tearing me apartYour thoughtless words are breaking my heartYou're breaking my heart
Jewel
Unless you call attentionto your presencewho will know you're there?Even a countryhas to weave and wave a flagas proof of its existence.
Rod McKuen
I heard of a manwho says words so beautifullythat if he only speaks their namewomen give themselves to him.If I am dumb beside your bodywhile silence blossoms like tumors on our lipsit is because I hear a man climb stairsand clear his throat outside our door.
Leonard Cohen
so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos...So ring the bells that still can ringForget your perfect offeringThere is a crack in everythingThat’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen
Who could have foretoldthe heart grows oldfrom touching others
Leonard Cohen
Everything comes down so pasteurizedeverything comes down 16 degreesthey say your amplifier is too loudturn your amplifier downare we high all alone on our kneesmemory is just hips that swinglike a clockthe past projects fantastic scenestic/toc tic/toc tic/tocfuck the clock!
Patti Smith
Deprivation is the mother of poetry.
Leonard Cohen
If you must write prose or poems, the words you use should be your own. Don't plagiarize or take 'on loan'. There's always someone, somewhere, with a big nose, who knows, who'll trip you up and laugh when you fall.
Morrissey
first of all nothing will happen and a little laternothing will happen again
Leonard Cohen
I’m not really one to write simplistic and jovial lyrics, and while on the surface I can see how “Bros” is a happy song – a celebration of friendship and one’s younger years – I see a panic in the words. Particularly the bridge, which I think expresses the fear I had, not of growing up, but of growing up without Sadie. I don’t know which one of us started having trouble entering the Fourth World first – I’d like to think it was me because I was a year older, but I don’t think our age difference was mirrored in our maturity. Either way, I worried that once we entered reality as budding adults – no longer pretending to be “raised by wolves and other beasts” – we wouldn’t be together all the time.
Ellie Rowsell
I would rather go swimming with great white sharks than wade in romance 'cause I can never find the courage to ask her to dinner or even to dance.
Adam Young (Owl City)