Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Most songs that aren't jump-rope songs, or lullabies, are cautionary tales or goodbye songs and road songs. "

Related Quotes:

" Any place is good for eavesdropping, if you know how to eavesdrop. "

" If you are recording, you are recording. I don't believe there is such a thing as a demo or a temporary vocal. "

" I bark my voice out through a closed throat, pretty much. It's more, perhaps, like a dog in some ways. It does have its limitations, but I'm learning different ways to keep it alive. "

" For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too. "

" My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. "

" I didn't really identify with the music of my own generation, but I was very curious about the music of others. "

" I'm usually more concerned with how things sound than how they look on the page. Some people write for the page, and that's a whole other thing. I'm going for what it sounds like right away, so it may not even look good on the page. "

" The blues is like a planet. It's an enormous topic. You can't ignore the impact that it has had and continues to have on the whole musical culture. It's a tree that everyone is swinging from. Without it, I don't know where I would be. It's indelible and indispensable. "

" I'm one of those guys that is still a bit afraid of the telephone, its implications for conversation. I still wonder if the jukebox might be the death of live music. "

" Most people don't care if you're telling them the truth or if you're telling them a lie, as long as they're entertained by it. "

" Don't look back, because someone might be gaining on you. "

" I think all songs should have weather in them. Names of towns and streets, and they should have a couple of sailors. I think those are just song prerequisites. "

" Don't you know there ain't no devil, it's just god when he's drunk. "

" I do like books on anatomy. I have to say I'm an amateur physician, I guess. "

" If you're in the middle of the ocean with no flippers and no life preserver and you hear a helicopter, this is music. You have to adjust to your needs at the moment. "

" I'm just trying to make a buck like everyone else. "

" Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends. "

" Mostly, I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. "

" I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary. "

" George Burns was a Vaudeville performer I particularly loved. "

" I have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong - I have audio illusions. "

" I saw a crow building a nest, I was watching him very carefully, I was kind of stalking him and he was aware of it. And you know what they do when they become aware of someone stalking them when they build a nest, which is a very vulnerable place to be? They build a decoy nest. It's just for you. "

" You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone. "

" All records are riddles, and whatever you may want people to think it's about, it may just be throwing them off. And you don't want it to get in the way of what someone else's understanding is. It's not really about anything. At the same time, it will find some meaning. "

" I look for things that are left of center, something you've only seen your whole life, but never heard. Hit it! With a stick! I have a guitar made out of a 2x4 that I bought in Cleveland. "

" I don't like listening to records a lot after they're done. There's just no real nourishment there for me. "

" When you're writing, you're conjuring. It's a ritual, and you need to be brave and respectful and sometimes get out of the way of whatever it is that you're inviting into the room. "

" People say all kinds of things about the ingredients of songs. But you know they are a kind of magic, in the sense that they may easily include a stain on your bedroom wall... and a variety of mis-recollections. And then you name it after a girl's name that you just made up. "

" Any image I have, it's just what I do, but it comes off as being very pretentious. When you're a bit in the public astigmatism, anything you do seems like you did it so somebody would see you do it, like showing up at the right parties. "

" If you are making a record, you are the one saying 'action', and you are the one saying 'cut,' and you have to be sure that the most interesting thing is not going on outside the frame. "