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" I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejected as well as movements that happened later. "

Joni Mitchell

Got

Heroes

Paint

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" But I have a tremendous will to live and a tremendous 'joie de vivre,' alternating with irritability. "

" My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species. "

" I believe that I am male and I am female. "

" I came through folk music simply because it was easy to get into it. "

" My childhood was very difficult. I had every childhood disease and then some, but my parents didn't mollycoddle me. They left me to fight those battles on my own. I guess that was very Canadian, very stoic. But it's good. I had to become a warrior. I had to give up hope and find a substitute for hope that would be far more stable. "

" We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn't like. It has no resemblance to democracy. "

" I thrive on change. That's probably why my chord changes are weird, because chords depict emotions. They'll be going along on one key and I'll drop off a cliff, and suddenly they will go into a whole other key signature. That will drive some people crazy, but that's how my life is. "

" My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I'm a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to me, 'Girl, you make me see pictures in my head!' and I took that as a great compliment. That's exactly my intention. "

Joni Mitchell

Cinema

You

" No one likes to have less than they had before. That's the nature of the human animal. "

" I get the same charge from juxtaposition of colors as I do from juxtaposition of chords. "

" Drag wasn't always counterculture. "

Joni Mitchell

Always

Drag

" At the point where I'm trying to force something and it's not happening, and I'm getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go and pick up the guitar. "

" I'd had a rough childhood. "

" The God of the Old Testament is the depiction of evil. "

" I had made all these rules for myself: I'm not writing social commentary, I'm not writing love songs. "

" You have this mounting aggressive ignorance with the rabbit's foot of their particular religion. You don't really have any kind of spiritual law, just a kind of a rabid mental illness. The songs are a little slice of life. "

" Rachmaninoff made a musician out of me. His 'Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini' was the piece that sent me into raptures. It spoke to me. To me, it was a tender entreaty for the misunderstood. "

" I've got 50 different tunings in the guitar. "

" The songwriting was almost like something I did while I was waiting for my daughter to come back. "

" I do have this reputation for being a serious person. "

" The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music. "

" When I came to California, it was the mecca of the world. Every young person on the planet wanted to be here. "

" I have always thought of myself as a painter derailed by circumstance. "

" I see the entire world as Eden, and every time you take an inch of it away, you must do so with respect. "

" Van Gogh was impulsive. "

" My parents told me I'd point to a bed of flowers and say 'Pink. Pretty,' before I knew any other words. "

" When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark. "

" I know my generation - a lot of them, they're getting old now, and they want to think back fondly, they want to kid themselves. A lot of them think, 'Yeah, we were the best.' That's the kiss of death. That's non-growth. And also that's very bad for the world. "