Music is like a huge release of tension.
It is a process of discovery. It's being quiet enough and undisturbed enough for a period of time so that the songs can begin to sort of peek out, and you begin to have emotional experiences in a musical way.
There'll come a writing phase where you have to defend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.
Though the body sleeps, the heart will never rest.
To be a musician, especially a singer-songwriter - well, you don't do that if you have a thriving social life. You do it because there's an element of alienation in your life.
Certain things in life are more important than the usual crap that everyone strives for.
O, it's enough to be on your way. It's enough just to cover ground. It's enough to be moving on. Home: better build it behind your eyes. Carry it in your heart, Safe among your own.
I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others.
I know now one thing only matters in these days... true love... love and love alone.
['Fire and Rain'] is sort of almost uncomfortably close. Almost confessional. The reason I could write a song like that at that point, and probably couldn't now, is that I didn't have any sense that anyone would hear it. I started writing the song while I was in London...and I was totally unknown.... So I assumed that they would never be heard. I could just write or say anything I wanted. Now I'm very aware, and I have to deal with my stage fright and my anxiety about people examining or judging it. The idea that people will pass judgment on it is not a useful thought.
You have to choose whether to love yourself or not.
I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.
I was in chemical jail.
All invisible from where we stand the connections come to pass, and though too strong to comprehend they affect us not the less.
Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have made a lot of difference to my audience that I'm as bald as a billiard ball!
Once you get that two-way energy thing going, everyone benefits hugely.
I don't know much about God. But if everything does originate with God, then certainly songs do as well.
I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.
If you think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.
I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.
If you're an addict, it controls your life and your life becomes uncontrollable. It's boring and painful, filling your system with something that makes you stare at your shoes for six hours.
I don't play the kind of music that works in a football stadium.
Turn away from your animal kind, try to leave your body, just to live in your mind.
I feel like if you let someone else create your vision, then it's not true to your band. No one can ever do as good as you want, or as good as you can yourself.
I don't take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.
