Charlie Parker Quotes

When I finished a song that I thought was good, I thought, I don't know where that came from, so I have no idea if I can do that again. I'm talking like, a hundred and fifty songs down the line. I still feel that.

I can't just sit down and make a song in a day. It's only possible if you focus on the music and not the sound.

I love writing music, but it seems I'm always writing words, so I don't get much time to do it.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don't really know what we're doing and when we do, it doesn't seem to help.

I think it's important to really press on with the song writing and just go with it. There's no code, there's no craft... it's just let yourself shine through your music. If it's meant to be loved and heard, it'll happen.

You feel the music needs something but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that's frustrating, especially if you don't come up with something for three days.

It is all about being open and paying attention to the music in your head. I think most people have original music playing in their heads from time to time.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I'd be writing hit songs every minute.

Because music is a language unto itself, when I'm writing, I need silence. I need to hear the music and the rhythms of the words inside my thoughts.

Some songs just fall out of you. And some you have to wrestle out like an abscess.

The words that I'm most happy with are the ones that come from my subconscious rather than my conscious. They just feel right. I think that's the same with music, really. If you're doing an album, there's ten or eleven sets of lyrics, so you get to the point of inspiration ten or eleven times - it's difficult.

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on. But routinely when I finish a book, I think, "What will I do? Where will I get an idea?" And a kind of low-level panic sets in. And then eventually something happens. I don't know. If I knew how it happened I would repeat the process, but I don't know - something just occurs to me.

I'm not sure if the next song I write is going to be about love or a song about a tree.

I don't know if I'll find the cinnamon girl. I think I already did, but I'm still singing, who knows.

I feel that I have something significant to say, but I cannot think what it is.

It sounds like I'm channeling or something, and I don't really fully understand what it is. I'll get a piece of paper and write down what I think is coming to me. And I'll play it once. Whether it's being recorded or not, I can then usually remember it for a sometimes shocking amount of time.

I think subconsciously or selfishly I knew that I was supposed to do something. It was like a thumping or a throbbing saying, "Yes, this what you've been waiting for." But you're a little dim to those spiritual thoughts when you're dumb like me. So I did have to get a little bit of a kick. I played it for a bunch of people and I think their reactions were warm and deep enough that they gave me the courage to get [the record] out there.

I do a lot of research, I try to think about how it relates to music and I just do a ton of drawing. It's much easier to work your ideas out that way.

Often I don't know what the song means until it's finished. Sometimes months later. I don't think that's bad. It implies that I don't know what I'm doing but-I think if you're able to follow your instincts, then that's knowing what you're doing.

I just want to go back to rockin', but I'm uncertain as to what to actually do. The truth is, I never stopped thinking about rock'n'roll for a second that I'm on holiday.

Maybe it's wishful thinking, this snaggly faith of mine, or maybe it's Miles Davis saying, Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

I don't know if there's any formula. I'm not sure I believe in that, to be honest. I don't know if there's any rhyme or reason to music. Sometimes it hits and sometimes it doesn't, really.

I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together.

There's a relationship between music and spirituality and inspiration and to a certain extent improvisation that draws me in, because I don't totally understand it. I know that those relationships have been telling me, since I started making records, where to go. What to write down.

I usually think in terms of music.