Guy Clark Quotes

If I knew where good songs came from, I'd go there more often.

Music is supposed to be entertaining and if it touches you emotionally, so much the better. Sometimes you do it to save your own life, not anybody else's. That's why I write. I'm not trying to change anybody else's life or the world, I'm trying to keep from blowing my own brains out. That's the real point.

There arent any rules, as far as anything-and that applies especially to writing songs, whatever gets the point across. So youre just kind of brought up to feel-in any field, if you say you can do it, do it. There it is.

Ain't no chance if you dont take it.

Most of the really good songs are dead true. ... It had to have happened to have the song be there. Every time I've tried to make stuff up it just kind of falls flat. So the majority of my work is something that happened to me, I saw happen to someone else, or a friend of mine told me happened. There is a certain amount of theatrical and poetic license. People are supposed to like it, that's why you're doing it. It's supposed to be fun. It's not brain surgery, it's heart surgery. They're just songs.

Anything that happens after I write a song...that's fine with me. It's up to the listener to read into it what they need from it. And that's part of the reason I write like I do, so I can leave the holes in the right places so people can say, 'Yeah, that happened to me,' and they're able to have their own little fantasy about it.

Things change all the time, and theyll probably never be the same again. Its just the natural evolution of the human condition. Things change, and whatever it is is what it is. I mean, you try to start second guessing that, you either get rich or die broke.

I hear this song and I think, Man, this is ... great. This is the best I ever heard this. I forget I'm the one singing.

I'm gonna build me a boat with these two hands, it'll be a fair curve from a noble plan.

I've gone a year and not written a song just because I couldn't think of anything. But I always come back to it because there's always that little buzz you get when you do something well and sing it out loud to the public. And people clap and tell you how great you are.

I get pretty much all the exercise I need walking down airport concourses carrying bags.

I just was apologizing for maybe being a little goofy.

This is a fantasy fiddle tune. The part you fantasize is the fiddle.

I have no reason to sit home and write songs all day without going out and playing for the folks. And I have no reason to go play for the folks unless I'm writing new songs so they can sort of feed off one another. And I just try to do the best I can.

Mary Gauthier's great. Yeah, we've played a lot of gigs together. She's really wonderful.

I love playing and I love singing, and the writing. There's kind of a symbiotic relationship between the writing and the playing.

I don't know what the outcome will be. I put a couple away for my grandkids, like that. So I don't know, who knows? Maybe I'll start building guitars for a living.

Interesting little game we play with each other.

All gut strings. Thats just the first kind of guitar I played, it was a nylon string guitar. And to me, its the purest form of guitar making, and I just enjoy doing it.

Its just something Ive always done. In South Texas, the first guitar you get is a Mexican guitar. And the first one I got, the first thing I did was take it apart.

I've known Shawn for several years. And he's just an amazing talent. He's a great writer, a marvelous, marvelous guitar player, and plays really good fiddle.