Laura Nyro Quotes

Joy is a part of my process. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that poetry, as a practice, necessitates a sense of joy. It's exhilarating to come into contact with the things we write into being. And a real sense of play and abandon – even when we are relying on hard-won technique, and even when the aim is deadly serious. How often do we get the excuse to stop, think, and then stop thinking altogether and try to listen to what sits behind our outside of our thoughts? Poets are lucky.

Writing music is like tasting the sky. It keeps me dreaming in color.

One of the reasons I write is I like being surprised

Ultimately, I think writing is a mixture of craft, inspiration, and being incredibly, courageously explorative with yourself - and being brutally honest, too.

There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.

Words, yes, formulating things, creating something from your heart, it is something very necessary, yes.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes I feel like playing 'Hospital'. Sometimes I feel like playing 'Pablo Picasso'. I've been playing a lot lately. I do it as long as I feel like it.

Having fun is fantastic, and I never want to lose a sense of that - and also, I think, you have to have that to put into your work, or else it's going to feel stiff.

Stone walls confine a tinker; cold iron binds a witch; but a musician's music can never be fettered, for it lives first in her heart and mind.

I find time to write the way kids find time to ride their bikes.

People create from different places. Some love to create from a tortured place, some from a joyful place. And when I feel like I'm a 5-year-old kid in my backyard playing pretend, that's when I'm happiest.

Art's everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

Many times in music, if you are given limitations, it expands the creativity.

I just always felt whole when I was writing. I felt this kind of beautiful privacy that I never felt in any other way. I feel like there's this great fullness to being alone, and writing is a really vivid way and a really magical way of being alone.

I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others.

Writing is the starting point from which all goodness (and crappiness) flows.

Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

I would advise puppeteering for any artist. It's a way to break down pretensions. It's a sculpture that can talk. It's a painting that can talk. And it's pure play. I think every artist needs to stay in touch with the idea of playing. The artist should always be playing, always. All art is performance.

Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all.

I love acting because it's this space where dreams can be realized, fantasy comes to life, and there are no limitations on what's possible.

I'm hungry for purpose. I'm looking for still that reason that I bought a guitar and started a band, to fulfill a purpose, to manifest destiny as to who I am and why I am the way I am, and what I do. I think it's still about the music, the song and the story.

I actually think leaving your children alone to fantasize, to write, to make projects on their own is good for them. Breathing down their necks is a form of control. Children should have their own space.

Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?

In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature.

Music to me is spontaneous, writing is spontaneous and it's all based on not trying to do it. From beginning to end, whether it's writing a song, or playing guitar, or a particular chord sequence, or blowing a horn, it's based on improvisation and spontaneity.