Matt Smith Quotes

I have no idea how I do anything. I never have. You know I just started playing guitar and started singing and started working on this act that I would call "Don McLean" when I was probably in high school. And I have been doing this for 40 years, adding songs and writing things, cobbling together albums, doing live things, you know, albums and tours. And then I have records on the charts. I have no idea how this happened.

While I was into many different types of music, and played with many different local groups, I really didn't have a band to call my own until Dire Straits was formed in 1977.

Well, I started writing songs about three years ago when I learned to play the guitar, but I've been singing since I was eleven.

I was writing songs by 12 and had a band by 14.

Any young, aspiring musicians out there, if music is what you want to do, if music is what you love and your passion. It doesn't take a fragrance, it's not about the tabloids, it's about you putting in the work, practicing every day, practicing your vocals, practicing your instrument, practicing songwriting. Hopefully one day you write the song the whole world wants to get down to. I promise you, if you go out there and sing and you put your heart and soul into it and you follow your dream, one day you're going to be sitting next to Ellen DeGeneres talking about how you broke records and rocked the Super Bowl.

The concept of what I want to do as an artist has not changed at all. When I was seven years old, I fell in love with writing songs and knew I wanted to make music and play it for a lot of people. Back then I said I wanted to heal people with music and bring them together. I called my music, "PAZZ," which means pop and jazz. To this day, all of those things still ring crystal clear.

I've been writing music since I was about eight. I would write sporadically. I wrote a lot of music in high school. I guess the oldest song on the record ("I Thought I Saw Your Face") is about eight years old. It's the old "I had my whole life to write my first album and six months to write the second one." I did, to some degree, but actually, a lot of the songs that ended up on the record, I wrote really recently. So it varies.

When I was writing songs, I always thought I'd make more of a career out of the drawings, the comics even more than the music.

I'd always thought that if I could get sober and stay sober, I would be able to have a career making music. My drug and alcohol addiction was the one thing holding me back. I had finally gotten the tools to stay sober, and it was just a matter of writing the songs.

I'm only 49 years old. I'm still in the middle of this whole thing. I don't feel like it's finished at all. I'm still planning to write better songs.

So, you’re hitting on Clare the Fair.” “I’m not hitting on her. I’m exploring the possibility of seeing her on social terms.” “He’s hitting on her,” Owen said around a mouthful of chips. “You’ve still got that thing you had for her back in high school. Are you still writing bad song lyrics about heartbreak?” “Suck me. And they weren’t that bad.” “Yeah, they were,” Ryder disagreed. “But at least now we don’t have to listen to you playing your keyboard and howling them down the hall.

It wasn't professional, but it was a few levels below the top level. I loved playing football, but my passion was always music. It didn't become a possibility to me until I started playing songs I thought were good. I think it happened during my third song. The dream to become a musician appeared in my heart, and that happened about 2010.

In retrospect Hank I don't know why I spent four years writing this book when I could have just made a hit sing-a-ma-jig album.

What I hope is to really focus on being a songwriter. I'd love to write songs for other people; that's something I'd really like to start doing.

I am still not taking my "career" in music for granted. It is constantly surprising that it works. Generally my thinking about the future has this assumption of an impending apocalypse.

I was playing in bands before high school even. My first band I was in at 14. And we were playing just Beatles.

Cheryl Cole, if you're reading this, I may not be as prety as you but at least I write my own songs.

It's amazing to know that 5 years ago I was writing songs in a basement in the ghetto and now I'm writing for Michael Jackson. I'd be a fool not to say it's a dream come true.

The first song I wrote was called "You" and it was a love song about somebody who didn't even exist. I remember them all because I used to always write terrible poetry. I keep all my notebooks.

It's always amazing seeing the song-writing process. A song just starts off as just an idea or a story you want to tell. It keeps building and building when you add the lyrics, the instruments, the vocals until you finally reach the finished song other people can enjoy.

These days, I find I'm applying a little more patience to my process. If I look back on my work, I can see those songs I bailed on could have been better, that had those great two verses and then I kind of coasted from there. These days, if a song is giving me trouble, I put it aside and pick it up later, and keep doing that, for a year if I have to, until it takes shape.

In high school no guys wanted to be in a band with me unless I was going to play bass or play grindcore or be in a scream-o band, so it was fun to finally have that experience of having my songs backed by a drummer and a bassist who were just as excited about it as I was.

I went straight out of high school, and when I was 17, all I wanted to do was play guitar.

I didn't really want to write just lyrics, but I wanted to meet Leonard Bernstein. Music was always the first reason I was writing songs.

When I was about 13 or 14. I was in a Kingston Trio type group. We evolved into the New Breed. Our first song on the radio was "Green Eyed Woman," not to be confused with "Green Eyed Lady".