Brian Wilson Quotes

I write music all the time. When I talk about having writer's block, it's more to do with lyrics than anything else.

Songwriting was very tough for me... I would go in and sit and hope for inspiration to come, and it was rarely forthcoming.

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.

Songwriting is hard - it's so easy to fall into the same traps. It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.

I go into my workroom seven mornings a week. There will only be one or two mornings a week where it seems to be going well, but to earn those days you have to go through slow, slodgy days where your mind feels like porridge.

I don't feel prolific. I feel like I'm plodding along. Each day you sit down, and you hope that you get your work done.

Sometimes I get a lyric, and the lyric, you know, comes off the page, and goes into my brain and comes out with a melody. Other times, I may create a melody first.

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.

The longer I carry on, the more difficult writing seems to get.

Johnny Andrews can make me fly with his ideas for new songs. It has always been a pure pleasure to write with him.

It's easy for me to write songs but hard for me to write an album; that's been my experience.

Hours later the blank sheet still stared at me, and I beat my fist against the desk in fury and fustration, striking it so hard my hand bled. That is how heavy a secret can become. It can make blood flow easier than ink.

When I hit a period of not being able to write music, I get up and walk away. It's pretty mean but it's true.

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 don't sit down to write a song, per se.

There is a formula that allows you to write a decent song. But a song like 'You're All I Need to Get By,' it just writes itself.

The best songwriting comes from being as creative as you can and editing it down to the good bits, essentially.

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

I just have to proceed as usual. No matter what happens, nothing helps with the writing of the next book.

I'm a songwriter. I need silence to hear the melodies, so I don't fill the days with a lot of sound.

I find it very difficult to compose when I'm not playing.

I probably wrote three-quarters of the songs without an instrument in my hands.

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

You wind up creating from silence, like painting a picture on a blank canvas that could bring tears to somebody's eyes. As songwriters, our blank canvas is silence. Then we write a song from an idea that can change somebody's life. Songwriting is the closest thing to magic that we could ever experience. That's why I love songwriting.

Every day you can write a song but some days there is just some magic in the air and something special about the catch; other days you write all day on a song line or idea.