Philip Kitcher Quotes

I love reading and I love thinking - the reason that I love my books so much is that in order to write them I have to read and to think for years at a time about the same period of time.

I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.

I feel such a creative force in me: I am convinced that there will be a time when, let us say, I will make something good every day , on a regular basis....I am doing my very best to make every effort because I am longing so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things mean painstaking work, disappointment, and perseverance.

I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.

When songs fall from the sky, all I can do is catch them before they hit the ground.

Whenever I write a song I see the whole song anyway.

Sometimes the fragment of a conversation, the color of the sky, the image in a dream, has everything to do with where the song begins.

I think the suggestion that all my songs are personal is insulting because that assumes that I have a bunch of issues that I feel the need to unload on strangers. That is not the case. It also assumes that I just talk about myself the whole time which, again, is not true.

When writing I just go with the song. I go with the song and try to tell the story. So the story may be "Wonderful Baby", which is a little song. Or it might be a gentle song, "Empty Chairs". Or it might be a rock and roll song like "Prime Time" or "Run, Diana, Run", or "American Pie". I don't know where it's gonna go. I don't have any idea what I'm doing. I just do it. I just keep doing it. I keep taking adva

I have some irrepressible pop impulses to write an appealing, concise song. And I also have some irrepressible kind of restlessness as well, and I need to keep myself interested. When I'm left to my own devices, there's a struggle.

Be encouraged. Your heart is writing a poem on the world and it's being turned into a thousand songs.

In the beginning, there was a kind of energy that - like an urgency to express myself, and the songs just couldn't be held in. But I think it changes, the nature of how that - what that energy is. And I need to court the muse in a much more serious way.

Song is not Truth, not Wisdom, but the rose Upon Truths lips, the light in Wisdom's eyes.

Whenever new ideas emerge, songs soon follow, and before long the songs are leading.

I think from a major-label perspective, if you were on the flip side of things and that's the world you were used to working in, your interpretation could be, "Oh, they're having trouble writing songs," when really it's like, "No, I'm not ready to write songs, I don't want to write a song right now, if I did write a song, it would be forced."

As you can imagine, over the years I have been asked many times to discuss and explain my song "American Pie." I have never discussed the lyrics, but have admitted to the Holly reference in the opening stanzas. You will find many interpretations of my lyrics but none of them by me. You will find many “interpretations” of my lyrics but none of them by me. Isn’t this fun? Sorry to leave you all on your own like this but long ago I realized that songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence.

In fact, one of the things that I really love about literary fiction is that it's one of the few kinds of writing that doesn't tell us what to think or what to buy or what to wear. We're surrounded by advertising.

Reading something for the first time and getting this feeling like the material provokes you on some level, and doing the movie is really just sort of defining and figuring out why exactly you felt certain things when you read it.

Discipline is the servant of inspiration.

I wrote 90 percent of the record in prison. A lot of people wonder, "How the hell did you do that?" I just pretty much played drums on my legs with my hands and while I did that, I would hum the guitar parts and sing the melodies of the songs.

All makers must leave room for the acts of the spirit. But they have to work hard and carefully, and wait patiently, to deserve them.

I hope people hear my songs and realize that writing music is kind of easy, or that taking your sadness and turning it into a beautiful song is worthwhile.

I work hard and I will always work hard. But I feel very lucky with the way that it has all come together. I still have my hands and I can still write songs. I still have my body and I can still dance. I owe God so much because things are going so well.

I believe that producing pictures, as I do, is almost solely a question of wanting so very much to do it well.

...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.