Paul Simon Quotes

I'd hear a tune in my head and the words would come. And then, very suddenly it just stopped. It seemed too stilted to try and learn how to write a song, to go to round robins and to learn things from other people on how to write a song. So I just stopped and did other things.

I wish it was clear for me how it happened [stop writing songs], then maybe I could start writing again. But it's kind of an "it." It just submerged itself. Because the way I had always written was just that it came out. It just happened.

For me to create an album of 12 songs, I've got to write about 80 songs. Half of those are totally weird and rubbish. But I get to some really good stuff after a while.

With writing a song, I've always felt, right from the start, like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. I don't ever feel there's a font of ideas to fall back on.

I used to feel like I wasn't a good songwriter when I couldn't finish a song by myself.

I have always found writing pleasant and don't understand what people mean by 'throes of creation.'

I find it painful when I'm without anything. But I work in multiple fields. If I can't write, I find myself taking photographs. I can go on the road and perform. But the most important thing for me is writing, and when I hit those walls, it's painful.

I wasn't encouraged to write just stand there and sing and I never thought I was a writer. I always figured if I couldn't write something as good as "He Stopped Loving Her Today," then what's the point?

I write lyrics everyday as I go. I'm always taking notes in my phone whenever I am inspired by something. Most of my writing starts out as poetry before I put it into songs.

The roughest part for me when I'm writing a song is staring at a blank page. Where am I going from here? If you're a songwriter, you have to do that every time you start a song.

When I have just sat down and tried to write the lyrics of a song, usually about half of it sounds like bullshit. I just have to go away from something and come back to it again later. I do a lot of editing and switching around and putting little pieces together to get the right mood and personality, and it takes me forever to get a song finished.

I always write the lyrics first. There are one or two exceptions over the years, but that's pretty much the way it's been. The process of applying music to words is a bit like scoring a film. You've got imagery.

writing is the loneliest job in the world. There's always that frustrating chasm to bridge between the concept and the writing of it. We're a harassed tribe, we writers.

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.

Throughout my career as a songwriter, I've had a knack for writing songs that were about me and my life experiences and observations.

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

Wintertime for me is a time when I do a lot of my writing in the studio. It's a time I enjoy. And it's very reflective and a very calming time of the year. Throughout the year I gather a lot of musical inspirations, and this is where I bring them to the studio and see what will evolve musically.

Once I've written a song, I sometimes refine them.

I have a hard time writing music when I'm on tour.

I try to keep the idea that there's an audience in as little space in my mind as possible, but you can't erase it entirely, the idea that when you're sitting down to write a song, people are going to hear it.

I know already the music I will write. But the words? I have not yet decided.

Sometimes I'll sing the same verse through the entire song, because the other verses aren't clicking. And when they do come to me, I'm in the middle of that same verse!

I have to work at tunes to get them to come out. Sometimes I'll sit there for four or five hours and get absolutely nothing.

Every song you write you think is the last one you're going to manage. You put everything you've got into the song, and you've twisted it and pulled at it and dug in and found a way to complete it. To get another one is the trick.

Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.