Johnny Flynn Quotes

I usually start with a lyric and see where that takes me.

I can't even begin to express the joy I get from writing songs, both on my own and with others, I hold it all sacred.

Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It's not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it's just like turning on the faucet. That's just the nature of it.

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

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

Even when I don't think I'm writing, I'm writing. There's some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it's collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that's when they come out.

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.

I write while I'm walking, on little scraps of paper. If I have a melody going, I can feel it for days.

For me, making music just starts with a simple melody, and lyrics will come sometime after that.

I don't get my inspiration from a specific source. It's more like if you listen to a good tune, it gives me inspiration to write a better tune.

Sometimes when I write songs, I don't know what they're about, and it just suddenly comes to me.

The songs sort of come out spontaneously and it'll take me awhile to figure out what exactly is happening lyrically, what kind of story I'm telling. Then I start building little bridges - word bridges - to make everything go from one point to the next point to the next point until it reaches the end.

Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.

Songwriting is a mysterious art. When I sit down to write a song, the end result should be mysterious and have this dark quality.

I love making music. I love being involved in arranging music. It's very natural to know what I want to hear next and come up with ideas that are variations of what might be good.

With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I'm teeming with the drive to write.

It all comes together. It's - that's the way it's always worked for me with songwriting.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

I wouldn't sit down and work at writing a song like a novelist or something.

Songs do write themselves through you; I know people find it hard to believe, but it's true.

One of the nice things about songwriting is you can be inspired by absolutely anything.

I get the biggest kick out of it, to hear words that I wrote and chords that I wrote being sung by somebody else.

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

Sometimes when I'm writing lyrics, it's a very loose train of thought, and wherever that takes me, I let it flow.

It's such a weird process, songwriting, because you just have to feel it. There's no right or wrong melody or lyric.