Lucinda Williams Quotes

We'd have made more, but I kept forgetting to write songs down.

I don't write poetry and then strum some chords and then fit the words on top of the chords.

As a songwriter, you might write every day and throughout the course of a year you might get four songs that are really special.

I get up, go and get a coffee, and go do the crossword - I'm loyal to one particular paper, the 'Guardian' - and that's my idea of a perfect morning.

Songwriting is the other weight on the opposite side of the scale from touring. They balance me out creatively.

Songwriting is something that's very daunting until you have your first successful song, I think.

I have four shelves covered with journals that I've written. Dad and I are writing songs together. I've probably written 100 songs.

I don't write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.

It takes a lot of selfish time to make music.

Every writer writes in different ways, and so some write the music first, while others write the lyrics first, and some write while they are doing other things, and it is just nice to see how other writers are writing.

I never wrote music or arranged songs or lyrics when I was under the influence of anything but coffee. That's not gone away.

I write in the mornings once the kids have gone to school, taking my laptop and a coffee to a little writer's room in town where I plant noise-cancelling headphones on my head and get to work.

I get up at 7:30. I grab a canvas bag and go out. I say hello to the people in the supermarket and liquor store. I buy the 'New York Times.' I go to the beach and think about characters and plot.

I'm a very early riser, and so I like to get up and try hard to write before the day even really gets started. Just me and a pot of coffee - I find I can get a lot done that way.

I'll write lines or words in a notepad. You work on little things and little parts; sometimes they turn into bigger songs.

I rise near dawn, make a strong cup of coffee, wander to my desk and come fully awake by reading something written the day before.

The very best thing you can do is to try to write a song that has some sort of impact.

I wrote and recorded 'Outside the War' and 'Run from the Races' while I was nine months pregnant.

Literally wrote 'Starboy' in 30 minutes.

My parents bought this baby grand piano, which was in my living room, that I owe a lot to. I would just play it and write on it for hours. It was my favorite toy.

I teach songwriting a lot, and I always tell my students, 'You gotta write the little songs sometimes to get to the next big song in the chute.' You gotta write 'em to get to it. You never know what's going to be a little song or a big song.

The morning is always my best time of the day for writing because that's when my head is best.

A lot of our songs are based in reality but imagined or using fictional characters as a way to write about something. I think inspiration comes from anything and everything, and it's filtered through our brains, and it comes out sounding like our band.

I remember writing lyrics for 'Take Me to Church' for a long time before I even had a song in mind for. It's not that I was trying to write that song for a year, but sometimes you just kind of collect lyrical and musical ideas and don't actually complete the song until you feel like they work together and have a home.

Sometimes you might get inspired by something, write about it, then later that lyrics sounds better on another beat. That's happened a few times. Like 'Dance Wiv Me' - those lyrics didn't start on that beat.