Leon Russell Quotes

It's weird, because I don't feel prolific. I don't write anything for months at a time.

I've never really suffered complete and utter writer's block, really. I equate it with sex: in the beginning of my career, I was writing five songs a week; now, I occasionally write a song. But it's an exciting moment when it happens!

I go through long periods of time when I don't write, and I'm fine.

I get so many ideas for songs, but I'm so seldom disciplined enough to sit down and crank them out.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

I love working and writing new songs. But sometimes you need to wait, to have something in your mind, and then you can let yourself play music.

Sometimes I'll sing the same verse through the entire song, because the other verses aren't clicking. And when they do come to me, I'm in the middle of that same verse!

The problem as you get older is, from my perspective, after a certain amount of songs, you tend to start writing something and then you stop and say, 'Wait, I think I've written that before.'

The idea of writer's block or not having inspiration is totally terrifying to me.

My goal is to think of nothing when I'm writing a song because too many influences could sabotage a potentially amazing song.

I found it was really impossible for me to write songs when I couldn't sing.

I just can't sit down and write three verses and a chorus and a bridge anymore. It just don't find it inspiring.

I wish it was clear for me how it happened [stop writing songs], then maybe I could start writing again. But it's kind of an "it." It just submerged itself. Because the way I had always written was just that it came out. It just happened.

I figure that that has a ten year cycle. At the end of that ten years, I began to get worried that I would run into what is known as the writer's block, the feeling of not being able to do these things.

Wintertime for me is a time when I do a lot of my writing in the studio. It's a time I enjoy. And it's very reflective and a very calming time of the year. Throughout the year I gather a lot of musical inspirations, and this is where I bring them to the studio and see what will evolve musically.

I can't just sit down and make a song in a day. It's only possible if you focus on the music and not the sound.

I do not believe in inspiration, but I must have a title in order to work, otherwise I am lost.

I go into my workroom seven mornings a week. There will only be one or two mornings a week where it seems to be going well, but to earn those days you have to go through slow, slodgy days where your mind feels like porridge.

The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song. What do I write about? I never know.

I never set out to write a certain kind of song, I just play my guitar and see if I catch something.

I don't write a great song every day. I don't write a great song every couple weeks. It comes in such random times.

I'm so hard on myself that when I'm in the studio, I'll write 10 songs and only use one. So those nine songs that are left over, I always think, 'Where could these go? Who could they be for?'

I haven't written anything in four years. I'm sort of dried up.

Television? It's a gateway to writer's block, isn't it?

I enjoy songwriting. It's slow-motion improvising.