Lou Rawls Quotes

It's a really personal thing for me to write a song.

I always like to write where I'm at in real life into whatever I'm working on.

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that's really it. In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing.

I wanted to write some lyrics that had some meaning to them, lyrics that were meaningful to me and hopefully people can take something from that.

My lyrics are my diary - you're hearing every detail of my life.

I can only speak for myself and my own music, because that is what I am most familiar with, and I write about things that I am living or experiencing.

Every song I've ever written has been based in reality, based in fact, things that happen to me.

If I'm writing strictly for others, how does that show what I'm experiencing or thinking? I just got to a point where I realized I could be as personal as I wanted to be and people could relate to those situations if they so choose.

I write my songs because I've lived them.

The words of the songs speak for themselves.

When I'm writing, I mean what I'm saying - there's a lot of me in each song.

Most writers write from their own experiences. That is where the honesty and intensity of emotions come from.

I think it's easier for me to write from experience.

I sit a lot with my lyrics - I don't write just to write or put a line in just to have one. Everything has to mean something to me.

You do your best to tell your own story, in the most specific way, and then you hope that that travels well, when it's done with heart and honesty.

I don't think I could write about something I've never experienced or felt; all my songs are about things I've been through.

Here's the thing: we don't write music for a universal statement; we just share our experiences. And that's all it is. It's always raw and very authentic.

When you write, what's going on in your life shines through in the songs.

All my songs are where I am.

What I write is very personal, but not autobiographical. It's more 'thematically personal' - what's up in my life in terms of themes at the moment.

It's the only way I really know how to tell the story is to be able to kind of live through the characters. So when I find something that resonates with me, it's usually because it cuts to something very real inside of me; something that I've gone through or experienced.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

I need some kind of emotional stake in it to write my lyrics, assuming that place. It might just be an emotion I understand but am not currently experiencing necessarily.

I think people do want to relate their entertainment to what's going on in their lives. Not everything.

I think I take little pieces of inspiration, then kind of do what's real to me and what's going on in my life or what I observe from other people's experiences and hope other people connect with it, too.