Philip Glass Quotes

Making music and writing kind of come from the same creative place.

Music is an amazing thing. I don't know if we really think about it the same way we consider a painting an amazing thing. I mean, a painting is, in quotes, imaginary. There is nothing on the canvas when you start; and writing a song, there is nothing there when you start.

In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of.

We all love to sing, and when we sit down to write a song I think it kind of shows itself to us.

People ask what was the first piece of music I wrote. There was no first piece.

I'd always loved poetry and I'd always loved writing music and composing music, but I hadn't thought of putting the two together until around that time.

I've never had trouble finding inspiration for new songs, no matter what I'm doing.

I am always writing music. I have got unlimited ideas because I have been clean and sober for my entire life.

When I'm writing [songs], some days the pen just goes. I'm not in charge and I'm almost listening outside of it. That's when I realize that we all have to start looking at life as a gift. It's like listening to a color and believing that these colors have soul mates and once you get them all together the painting is complete.

With writing music and writing songs and recording music and coming up with stuff, you need to kind of reengage that kind of inner child to come up with interesting perceptions.

Writing music always happened for me in periods when I wasn't under the influence of mind-altering substance.

It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born.

I don't write songs, songs write me.

I am going to write my symphony; I'm just going to start tomorrow.

When I write my music I see all the rivers flowing... sensual, spiritual, religious, animal, intellectual.

Morrissey writes wonderful song titles, but sadly he often forgets to write the song.

As for me, I rarely write a song. But when I do write a song, like "Ain't No Chimneys in the Projects," which came to me at three a.m. one morning, on a whim - I get a percentage.

When you can write music that endures, bravo. Until then, keep quiet and study the work of those who can.

When I get an idea for a song it would gel in my mind for weeks or months, and then one day just like that, Ill write it.

There's nothing like the eureka moment of knocking off a song that didn't exist before - I won't compare it to sex, but it lasts longer.

I would find myself, not necessarily always assigning these little bits of music for here or there, but all of a sudden something would fall into place and it would be exactly that.

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

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

I love putting the music together. It's like art.

Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.