Ed Kowalczyk Quotes

Even when I don't think I'm writing, I'm writing. There's some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it's collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that's when they come out.

I'm always writing something. There's always some structure sitting around someplace. There's always things on the computer, things scratched on score paper, legal tablets full of lyrics. It's never not buzzing around me all the time. I'm always doing it.

I write when I have to; I write when the song is done and I deal with the idea and I just go with it and I'll become what that song is all about until I have finished it. And when you do that, it makes the song more visual, it makes it more personal.

There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.

I don't have any particular methodology, to tell you the truth. 'Silver Blue' took exactly the amount of time to write that it takes to sing it, and 'Prisoner in Disguise' took about a year and a half. So you just never know.

I write while I'm walking, on little scraps of paper. If I have a melody going, I can feel it for days.

I'm always writing; my phone is full of ideas - melodies and lyrics and stuff.

I don't get my inspiration from a specific source. It's more like if you listen to a good tune, it gives me inspiration to write a better tune.

I'll write lines or words in a notepad. You work on little things and little parts; sometimes they turn into bigger songs.

Composing easy? I find it easy if - big if - the idea is right, if I have the right collaborator, and if my collaborator is in the room. I like my collaborator to be in the room.

The first line of the song is always the hardest thing to write. And then after that, the song should - unless it sucks - it should write itself.

A lot of our songs are based in reality but imagined or using fictional characters as a way to write about something. I think inspiration comes from anything and everything, and it's filtered through our brains, and it comes out sounding like our band.

Trying to write new music is definitely daunting, but I try not to overthink it.

I try to imagine what the greatest song I could ever write would sound like, and then try to do it.

When I write songs, it happens very quickly, sometimes 10 to 15 minutes, and I draw inspiration from everything.

I work every day. I write every day. I walk around in silent conversation with my latest unfinished songs.

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.

I would write poems and think up melodies to them later.

When I was writing 'Shotgun,' it's one of the first songs that's come to me as an image.

I think that once you start writing songs, you start developing a library of ideas that you can go and take from, so it gets easier as you go.

Sometimes I'll have an idea for a story or have a subject, and that will inspire lyrics, but most of the time, hopefully, they already exist somewhere else.

When you've got an extra gear in your head where that's all you do, you've constantly got a little radar up. ... And when something hits that strikes that beeper, hits that radar, it's like my song skills kick right in and go, 'Oh, OK, there's a song in that.' And then I start trying to figure it out.

Having imagination it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that if you were unimaginative would take you only a minute.

I have to have a guitar sitting around. I sing in the shower. I sing around the house. The music comes secondary. The lyrics come first.

When you're in the middle of writing a song, you can come up with this whole web of stuff only you know how to get through. That's very entertaining for me to do that.