Joe Strummer Quotes

I know that in my past I was young and irresponsible - but that's what growing up is. You learn from your mistakes.

I was trying to learn how to deal with the freedom that I had away from home for the first time. 'Long Black Train,' the song and the album, are very special to me. It was just one of those things that I felt like God gave to me for a purpose, and I've been out here promoting that purpose.

Obviously, as you grow up, no one's ever 100 percent proud of every decision that they've made, and that's OK. I think as long as you learn from your mistakes and don't make them over and over again, you're on the right path.

I've learned some of the greatest life lessons from growing up in the skate and punk rock communities.

I have made plenty of mistakes. The key to life is to learn from them. I have been a little too introspective, but I think that stemmed from insecurity or shyness. I took a long time to grow up.

I made stupid decisions as a kid, or as a young adult, but I'm trying to be now, I'm trying to take this lemon and make lemonade.

I did some stupid things when I was younger, but I got a lot out of my system. Every time, my mom was waiting there with an 'I told you so.' Moms are usually right. You're wrong if you don't think that they've done what we're doing, because they have.

I see myself continuing to be a songwriter and a motivator and someone that has grown in her faith.

It's from being melancholy and having my human down experiences that I learn, that I overcome, that I transform - and these realizations I put into song. That's what I choose to put in my backpack and carry with me around the world.

I have songs about growing up, about ex-relationships - ex-relationship, I should say.

When you've had a chance to live some experiences then you can really write, and not having lived that much when I was young I didn't have much to write about. Now having seen life, the songs seem to come easier.

Artists like Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Albert King, Ann Peebles, Isaac Hayes, and so many more gave me hope when I was an angst-filled teenager trying to make sense of it all... They were my teachers. Through their music, I learned how to live, how to be true to myself, and how to tell my story as a songwriter the way that I was feeling it.

I definitely wasn't a perfect person in high school. That is the time to make mistakes, especially with significant others and also with friends.

The more wild experiences you have, the better songs you can write.

I may have got a little carried away and many critics found fault with some aspects of the film, but as a coming of age film of a character, 'Vaaranam Ayiram' worked with the audience.

I had to have experience, you know what I mean? Because I've been doing this since I was 14... I couldn't write about anything at 14. I had to live some life. I definitely lived some life.

I always had wished somebody else would sing my songs, but there wasn't anybody who knew them, so I sang them myself and eventually became a better singer and guitar player.

I think you learn. You learn from your mistakes. You learn from things you do and try to stay away from the negatives in your life. I think I've grown.

I would say the hummingbird really deserves the royalties on [some of my songs].

I always thought of myself as the piano player in the band. That, I suppose, I'm confident about, and I guess my songwriting developed as I went along and I got a certain amount of confidence in that. The songs are like my kids, I'm proud of all of them for one reason or another.

I'm not here to write a song for you, I'm here to help you write a song for yourself.

I started to write songs. And I started to like what I was writing. I think it's a new way for me to express things that are closer to myself than when I play a role, because, of course, it's really not me. I'm finding a new way. I don't know what it's going to be. But I know that I will need to give it to people one day.

I'll always definitely strive to write songs that are going to help people feel confident in themselves.

Its always important to fall back on your instincts and core beliefs and that was pretty hard for me to do but trusting in my self the way I trusted that if I were to sit at a piano for two hours and I was going learn something, that trust I'd put in myself really helped me get through it. For five to six months I just wrote songs and believed they would turn out to be things I could be proud of and be happy.

As far as change, anyone from the age of 13 to 19, you become a whole new person because you grow up. There was so much that I didn't know or that I thought I knew because I was just a 13-year-old at the time who thought I knew everything. But I realized very quickly that, no, there's so much about everything that I don't. So what I've at least tried to do is accept that I don't know everything. Life is so much more fun that way. And it's easier. I've just been trying to learn, rather than to pretend that I'm perfect.