Ne-Yo Quotes

All of my surroundings influence my songwriting. It's autobiographical, although I leave enough space so it's relatable.

You can only really sing about what you know; at least, I can.

Most of the songs I write are just very directly from my life. I don't have a big imagination. Whenever I tried to write from fantasy, it comes out sounding really fake.

I write my songs because I've lived them.

I think that's the only way I know how to write songs, is to think about my life, and also to think about the words at the same time.

My music has been inspired by true events in my life.

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.

When you write, what's going on in your life shines through in the songs.

A lyric has to mean something to me, something that has happened to me.

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

I always write my music based on what is going on in my life at the time.

None of my own experiences ever finds its way into my work. However, the stages of my life - motherhood, middle age, etc. - often influence my subject matter.

When I started to write a tune, I just wrote the nearest at hand, which was what was happening in my own life.

I think I take little pieces of inspiration, then kind of do what's real to me and what's going on in my life or what I observe from other people's experiences and hope other people connect with it, too.

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment.

I'm self-deprecating, but I'm an artist, too. I have to write new songs to chronicle stuff for myself. I write a song like 'Middle Age' or 'Responsibility' or 'I Just Work Here,' and it's about how bleak life can be. But it's real.

The story of 'Lasers' is my story. I didn't have to look too far to get subject matter for this record; it was stuff that was happening to me.

I've always drawn on bits and pieces of my own life.

I always like to write where I'm at in real life into whatever I'm working on.

I began seeing certain things happen in my life and other people's lives and getting inspired by it and writing about it. And that's where you get 'Happy Birthday' from and 'Ross Capicchioni' from or you even get 'I'm Sorry' from.

It's great to be able to write songs and draw on life, to write truthfully, and to be able to do that, it's good to be exploring other stuff as well.

I suppose an artist takes the elements of his life and rearranges them and then has them perceived by others as though they were the elements of their lives.

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that's really it. In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing.

Everything in life influences my music. I've always used songwriting as a means to share what I think is profound.

All art, from the paintings on the walls of cave dwellers to art created today, is autobiographical because it comes from the secret place in the soul where imagination resides.