Sammy Cahn Quotes

Every day you can write a song but some days there is just some magic in the air and something special about the catch; other days you write all day on a song line or idea.

I don't think I've ever actually written from inspiration, actually had a song just go, 'Bing!' I only recall that happening to me twice - once was with 'Terrapin' and the other was 'Wharf Rat.' I mean, that's twice in a lifetime of writing!

I sleep music. I wake up, and there's a riff in my head. Every step I take, there's a riff, a beat, or something.

But over a period of time It's the melodic things that are in my head all day.

One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things.

It's a big plethora of music floating around in my head all the time, and I'll sit there and write a song.

Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.

I often think of random melodies. And I pretty much hear in my head what I want to do with the orchestra as I'm writing on the piano.

Sometimes a chord on a guitar will somehow spur some thought in your head, and you will write a song about it.

If you write songs long enough, you run out of material that's original to yourself.

It's really hard for me to finish a song unless I have a strong visual in my head while I'm writing it.

When you sit down and write a song, you kind of have the idea for the song, and you sit there at the piano and you kinda just write it. And then of course later there's some dinking around with it and changing some stuff. But there's this thing that happens when the song first comes out, that sort of magic when it first comes out of the ether, and you can't even really explain where it comes from. That happens so much with music, and people understand that with music. But I really think that a lot of movie and TV should be the same way.

Writing a song is like - you're writing a song all the time. It's just when it pops out. It's been there all the time. It's not something that suddenly you do it. It's always there. Suddenly, it's in the right mixture inside you to come out. Usually when you're writing on the piano or a guitar, you don't write in lyrics, on their own. To me it's very boring.

I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.

I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.

I have music in my brain all the time, all sorts.

Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

Sometimes a song indicates that it wants to be about a certain thing. And then if you write it, you find that it is about something that you've done.

Very often, writing a song is a process that happens to me rather than one that I instigate. I feel a song coming on and, like a sneeze; I wait for it until it comes.

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.

I don't dream songs. I'm more apt to write dreams down and then to be able to interpret them into a song. I also tend to get up and write prose in the morning from which will come songs.

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I'll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I've written a whole song in an hour.

I find I'm not one of these composers that are, you know, walking along a beach or walking on the mountainside in County Donegal that's, you know, 'Oh, a melody.' It's more a matter of eventually taking that moment with me to the studio, and it begins to evolve.

After that, I specifically started writing lyrics. I would like sweat and think and get it all together.