Skylar Grey Quotes

I just love storytelling. I write music to tell stories. So when I'm done writing a song, I take it and go, 'Okay. How can I interpret these lyrics differently?' I love taking lyrics that were so close to me at a certain point in my life and then revamping them. I always want to take things to the next level.

The thing is I write to music, so every script I have has its own playlist. Music just opens me up to the emotions that I'm writing. It's just a pretty cool thing.

I write when I have to; I write when the song is done and I deal with the idea and I just go with it and I'll become what that song is all about until I have finished it. And when you do that, it makes the song more visual, it makes it more personal.

I had to see and feel and be with the thing that I wanted to write about.

I'd say most of my songs I write from personal experience. When I feel like I don't have any inspiration in my personal life, I think about others that are close to me and maybe what they're going through or even just people I've come across, acquaintances.

I collect words and phrases and cut things out of newspapers and keep scrapbooks and write down ideas in my phone or 10,000 notebooks all around my house. It's not very organised, but I keep collecting, so I did have a lot of material to help me to write songs.

I don't care if it's somebody else's song. Most of the time, you'll find that I'll put my own stamp on it. But I started writing more because, you know, it's easy to regurgitate what somebody else is doing, but it's exciting to be able to come up with your own writing.

I want to write just as much as Kanye may have for whomever Kanye has written for.

I would wake up really early and go into the hotel bathroom, put a towel over the toilet, and put my laptop there. I'd put my headphones on and just write. And so now when I do writing sessions, and I am stuck on a part, or I can't figure out a chorus, I'm just like, 'Give me a second,' and I'll go to that bathroom.

I Hope' is the fourth song that I'd ever written in Nashville. I didn't know that it was as special as it was.

We cut songs that touch us because if they don't touch us first, there's no way in the world we're going to be able to sell those songs to somebody else.

Sometimes you might get inspired by something, write about it, then later that lyrics sounds better on another beat. That's happened a few times. Like 'Dance Wiv Me' - those lyrics didn't start on that beat.

My process of songwriting comes from a very real place: a place that when you watch 'American Idol' - God bless it, it's probably an awesome experience that these people are having, but it's not a real one.

When writing 'Give and Take' and 'Originals,' the predominant emotion for me was curiosity.

I've never had trouble finding inspiration for new songs, no matter what I'm doing.

Sometimes when I'm writing lyrics, it's a very loose train of thought, and wherever that takes me, I let it flow.

The best way to write a song is to think of something else and then the song kind of creeps in.

I've always had good songs, it's the great songs that are difficult to find.

Sometimes, the better writing comes when the song speaks through me and tells me what the song wants to say.

I don't know how other people have a topic or have a goal when making a song, like, 'Let's write about this, or let's write about that.' It's kind of difficult for me. Personally, I like vibing out and freestyling.

I can't even begin to express the joy I get from writing songs, both on my own and with others, I hold it all sacred.

I work every day. I write every day. I walk around in silent conversation with my latest unfinished songs.

I can't tell a story just by deciding to tell a story, do it in a didactic way. I need to have my own emotion, to feel, 'Wow, there is something I can discover, I can create.'

It doesn't necessarily take four years to write a good piece of music. It might take four hours. It just depends on when your inspiration comes.

The 'sent' folder of my email program is really my biggest inspiration and my biggest source of lyrics. That's where I go to pick up a lot of the lyrics that I'm writing.