Gordon Lightfoot Quotes

They think something's gone wrong, but in Don't Look Now, for instance, one scene was made by a mistake. It's the scene where Donald Sutherland goes to look for the policeman who's investigating the two women.

For me, the biggest successes I've ever had were the ones I never counted on. I never thought my first big record would be a hit. I thought it was an average song.

The beauty of what I happened by extraordinary chance to put together is that nobody would have believed that this is possible, and certainly I didn't expect that it was possible. I just moved from step to step to step.

I think making a movie or a record, the best things happen by accident - and those end up being the magic. Every time I've followed my gut it's been better than when I've tried to do what I was supposed to do.

What I didn't know that by sticking to craft we would blow open some doors that I never saw opened before.

I feel like a hostage to fortune. Not that I am complaining. I wanted to play the role. But in truth I didn't think the show would be such a success. OK, I thought it would fail. Not because it was bad. I was confident it was good, but plenty of good things just sort of wither on the vine.

My ideas tend to arise out of nowhere when I'm not intentionally trying to think of something.

If I find something I like, I'll chase it and see what comes out the other side. Once a song gets momentum and gets away from you, that's a good sign.

Every time I write a song my approach changes.

Sometimes you just stumble into something that works, and here I am a quarter of a century later.

Musical accidents are a gold mine. The thing about accidental discoveries is they won't be made unless you put yourself in a position to make that discovery. To do that means hundreds of hours, days and weeks where you do things and don't discover anything.

I guess the big thing to say about 'Pig Farm' is that none of us knows if it works, and we're going in blind. It's in the tradition of 'Urinetown,' kind of - but that's a pretty small tradition. It's possible that it can fail.

Some people just come in, do it and they know it's right. It turns out better than you imagined it was going to sound. When that happens, you take it as a gift.

I am a rare occasion. I think if everyone had known it was going be me who succeeded, they would have supported me a lot more. They would have known what to do with me a lot earlier. They just didn't know.

You feel the music needs something but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that's frustrating, especially if you don't come up with something for three days.

Lots of comics try stuff out all year round, which is very sensible - I don't.

Yogi seemed to be doing everything wrong, yet everything came out right.

Well, a lot of successes come by mistake.

When I put my brush to canvas, I never know what I'm going to paint. It's like when you're walking down the street with your hands in your pockets, humming a tune, you don't know what you'll be humming five minutes from now.

That's the thing about musicians: The priority is to create something new that's never been before. And you put your life on the line every time that you play.

You never know where inspiration is going to come from.

I didn't intend to make one solo record, much less two. It's really a matter of seeing how it goes.

Singing pop music was not something I planned, but I managed to do it.

I never really thought I'd be successful. I never though I'd get books published, but this was something completely beyond me. The fact that it happened is wonderful, but it is not something that I was aiming for.

I love playing our older songs along with newer ones but If all I have is my old stuff, I quit. Creating is more rewarding.