Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

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

The songs sort of come out spontaneously and it'll take me awhile to figure out what exactly is happening lyrically, what kind of story I'm telling. Then I start building little bridges - word bridges - to make everything go from one point to the next point to the next point until it reaches the end.

With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song.

I've always wanted to be a songwriter and a storyteller and somebody who conveys a feeling to the listener or the viewer.

I listened to a lot of Bob Dylan songs to see how he works. I've gotten into writing story-songs.

I'd say almost that words come first, melody second.

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

I think, with music, I'm a lyricist who talks about real life things.

You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies.

People don't stress enough that when they're writing lyrics, they are writing.

I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.

I was writing poetry, and the Mountain Goats was an outgrowth of that.

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 try to make all my songs good. I don't ever write one to finish one. A lot of protest songs end up that way, driven by some kind of emotional response.

For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.

When you write songs, you can't really point out the exact thing you're inspired by. It's more a state or a mood or an atmosphere that you're trying to put into words.

When I started out, I was definitely writing about experiences that I hadn't had yet. The songs were just based on my influences, songwriters that had written songs before me and that were more experienced and 20, 30 years older than me.

For example, after developing a sound similar to an elephant trumpeting, I wrote the song Elephant Talk which gave my elephant sound an appropriate place to live.

I usually write my music on a piano, and I really enjoy performing that way, because that actually shows how the music was in my mind before it actually became an electronic song.

I find it harder to write the lyrics afterwards because then you're just trying to fit them into something that's already there.

I write a lot of rhymes, but I don't really end up using them a lot of times, and I end up just freestyling. I like to write music, though, more than I like to freestyle, to be honest.

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

People say all kinds of things about the ingredients of songs. But you know they are a kind of magic, in the sense that they may easily include a stain on your bedroom wall... and a variety of mis-recollections. And then you name it after a girl's name that you just made up.

Listen to the Bee Gees and you can learn to be a great writer.

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