Ronny Cox Quotes

I think good art should always be entertaining, or at least give pleasure of some sort. And my chief goal as a writer has always been to tell a good story and give my readers a good time.

All I want to do is write songs about funny characters I made up.

The best songwriting comes from being as creative as you can and editing it down to the good bits, essentially.

My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I'm a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to me, 'Girl, you make me see pictures in my head!' and I took that as a great compliment. That's exactly my intention.

I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience.

The number of elements that have to go into a hit would break a computer down. the right season for that play, the right historical moment, the right tonality.

I think the thing that has made it possible for me to write personal songs and sing them year after year is the sensibility for good writing. Just opening your veins all over the paper is not necessarily going to be interesting. I wanted to speak to people.

There's a few times in the past when I wrote a song, and I put the words together, and they were very clear pictures, and I felt like I was putting together a really good story. But I don't think I was ever really able to stay on that. What I've sort of developed lyrically is more about the sound of the vocals and what they are.

I wanted to be an actor. That was my real goal. But I wasn't any good at it, so I wrote my own material and acted through that. That's my idea of fun. I get to be all these things in the songs.

You have to live what you write, or you have to know it. There are exceptions, like story songs, where you just have to have your facts straight. But I think you don't have to live a hard life to be a good or interesting songwriter.

I am very into lyrics. I start with what the words are saying, what the storyline is saying, like a good script. It should really capture me, do something for me. If I don't get it, it's not going to move people, and if it's not going to move people, it's not going to happen.

Mr. Fantasy was the only song that was scribbling on a piece of paper.

As a songwriter, that's really what you hope for - to make that connection with your audience.

People may think I'm trying something new by telling stories, but they're just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That's what I do.

The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

I get so excited when a song I wrote that's very personal to me goes No. 1 and I look down and see people singing the words back to me.

I'm not a great writer of literature. I'm an entertainer.

Essentially, I'm a storyteller, and I make my living by telling stories, be they music or nonfiction or fiction.

The good thing about songwriting is you don't have to delineate between what's true and what's fiction; records aren't put on the shelf that way. Books are, movies are, but records aren't.

I've written songs on everything. Menus. Napkins. Little pieces of paper.

I think in most cases, when you're writing a song, you're just making up a little story, and you're not really thinking about making a point one way or another about it. You're just coming up with a little scenario and seeing it through, and that's it.

I wrote my first song when I was about eight. It was about putting a diaper on a chicken!

Character is always my driving force. And to tell a good story and to provide an entertaining read.

I really like doing puppetry; I'm not sure if it will find its way into 'Big Bang,' but it always does seem to find its way into a lot of things.

The technology is really where all of the changes have taken place, but the fundamentals of a good story being the basis of every good picture, and really the only basis still remains the rule, more so today, I think, because we've unfortunately weaned an audience from birth to kind of mindless movies.