Halsey Quotes

My songs are about who I am.

I'll take a certain concern of my own or a situation and try to frame it around a fictional story, but sometimes just straight-up autobiographical songs work well, and sometimes a story is better. I like stories. I like to hear them. I don't think there are enough of them in songs anymore.

Songwriters tell the truth.

You wind up creating from silence, like painting a picture on a blank canvas that could bring tears to somebody's eyes. As songwriters, our blank canvas is silence. Then we write a song from an idea that can change somebody's life. Songwriting is the closest thing to magic that we could ever experience. That's why I love songwriting.

What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.

I think it's such a powerful thing: Words and melodies, and you put them together. I couldn't really picture a world without music. It would be quite boring.

I think in most cases, when you're writing a song, you're just making up a little story, and you're not really thinking about making a point one way or another about it. You're just coming up with a little scenario and seeing it through, and that's it.

I'm a big fan of lyrics - lyrics are the thing that move me in certain ways.

I take a lot of pride in my songs.

I'm inspired by day to day life, things that people go through, things that make people tick. Everybody has a story, so you try to put stories into songs and try to make it as entertaining as possible.

Sometimes I make up songs, and they're just strictly fiction. Other times, I draw on things that have happened in my life or friends, women, all sorts of things.

I struggled with a lot of doubts around my songwriting and around what I was and what my purpose and mission were.

I remember writing 'The One I Can't Have' at the kitchen table. I was looking at a picture of Truman Capote with Marilyn Monroe and that's where I started. It doesn't make any sense because he was gay, but it was just the idea of the short guy and the beautiful blonde out of his league. That's where I started, but very quickly it became about me.

Sometimes when you're writing a song and that song comes into your head, it definitely comes from somewhere, like a real experience.

There's a lot of reflection that goes on whenever I write a song - it's been a wild whirlwind last couple of years and there's a lot to talk about, and hopefully that's evident in the music.

I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children.

Being a songwriter is really the base of being an artist, for me.

I never sang for a Grammy, for money, for fame. That's my whole purpose for singing: for people, for the fans.

Seriously, my music really does help my acting, and, like, getting in and out of a character from a different lifestyle and writing a song about it. Likewise, my acting inspires the music because I can write a theme that I wouldn't necessarily approach at all in life.

Stories come to me and I don't know where they come from, but afterwards I can look back and say, 'Oh yes, that's got a little bit of me, or a little bit of my own son in it'. That's where ideas come from.

When you're writing a song, you have to know two things. You have to know who you are, and you have to think about other people.

I turned everybody on so, psychologically, I guess I was pushing the boundaries creativity.

Why can't you write a great pop song when you are 85? Maybe you can.

Storytelling is what lights my fire.

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.