Rob Thomas Quotes

My favorite process is writing, from day one. The songs I have written throughout the years were a real great opportunity for me to communicate, because I think tha'ts my prime objective on this planet.

If something happens to me, you're going to hear about it. I only know how to write songs about my life.

I'm not done writing songs about you yet.

When I write songs I write for myself...I'm writing it as a form of expression, and hoping to find an audience, an audience that responds to music that is honest and lyrical and tells stories.

I like the process of writing songs. It makes me feel good.

The reason you write [songs] is because there's something you want to say that is important to you - enough to go through all the torture of writing.

You don't have to be as good a writer to write a song; it's a very different process to writing straight prose. To learn how to write prose takes a lot of years of practice.

I think I always thought of the guitar as the vehicle to be able to make some musical idea up. The only appeal to learning more chords was having more chords to put into songs. I never got too wrapped up in becoming technically good. So writing songs happened pretty simultaneously with learning how to play the guitar.

Songs are kind of alive, I think; once you finish writing them, that doesn't mean that that's it for the song. It can have its own little life, I think.

I think that anyone really can write songs, it just takes having an idea and a feeling and chasing it, and you can learn more about it. I think that's why I go to so many sessions. It is a craft that you can learn from other people. I find it to be the most fascinating thing. So I write a lot, yeah!

Years of my life were lived knowing that I'd get a book out of them one day.

I also started writing songs because I had this burning activity in my heart and had to express myself.

Writing gave me a life.

I'm a storyteller, and everyone in this family expresses themselves through writing to get through life's milestones.

I've always, always, always listened to music since I was, like, 7 years old and made up stories in my head based on what I was hearing.

You get to tell your story through your music if you choose to.

I sometimes think I should write a book. I've seen some things, you know, but it's all there in the songs.

Different people have different ways of doing things. For me, becoming a songwriter first and falling in love with the Nashville songwriting community and the process of songs and getting better and putting more in what I wanted to say, was absolutely vital in me even wanting to be an artist.

We write so many songs, it is difficult to narrow them down.

Sometimes a song can take up to a year to write, and because I waited that year and waited to work on it that day, it came up that extra 50 percent.

I write songs about things that I'm simultaneously trying not to think about.

I enjoy storytelling. I like to write it, I like to direct it, I like to act in it, I like to produce it. I like to be around storytellers. That's what excites me.

Personally there is first: imagination; second: the act of writing - and third: the act/act of vocalizing.

I know my fans look up to me and that's why I make my songs so personal; it's all about things I've experienced and things I like or hate. I write for myself and hope that my fans like what I have to say.

Advice? Focus on the craft. Study the greats. Try and understand how and why they made the writing choices they did. Then, start by copying them...just as an exercise. See if you can do similar things. Learn how to write a song like so and so. Then, when you've done that, write a song like yourself. Learn to color within the lines before going outside them.