John Prine Quotes

The great man who gives a true transcript of his mind fascinates and instructs. Most writers suppress individuality. They wish to please the public.

I feel like it's important, especially at young age, to find exactly what it is that makes your style so important as opposed to just trying to fit into the iconic styles of performers out there.

No thesaurus can give you those words, no rhyming dictionary. They must happen out of you.

The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.

No one can write like Vallejo and not sound like a fraud. He's just too much himself and not you.

When you're just like everybody else, you've nothing to offer other than your conformity.

You have to write the story that's at the front of your head. There is no point in trying to write for the market; it won't ring true.

I guess if you have an original take on life, or something about you is original, you don't have to study people who came before you. You don't have to mimic anybody. You just have a gut feeling inside, an instinct that tells you what's right for you, and you can't do it in any other way.

I write from my imagination, not from what I've read in books or seen on TV or to make money. I wrote from an idea I was passionate about.

Don't imitate. Write what you know about, that has to be your goal.

Sometimes you find your voice by trying to write like people, and sometimes you find it by trying to write unlike people.

In a way, there's nothing new under the sun, so anything you write about has been written about by other people. All you can do is bring yourself to it, bring as much honesty as you can to it.

The moment you start thinking about what other people and other artists think, you're going to start writing like other people.

Everything that I've ever made in my life is from my instinct.

I love creating things that come from my gut and my soul.

The more you see somebody else's version of something, the harder it is to make it your own.

I look at it like this: I'm being myself, everybody else in my industry is faking it.

I just try to write literally what I love. That's usually the barometer that I use. As trite as it sounds, I'm like, 'what would I want to see? What would I be excited about?'

If you're always looking at someone else, trying to imitate them, how can your natural gifts ever emerge?

I just try to be myself and not conform to something I'm not and just continue doing what I do. I just try not to think about the fact that I'm an inspiration for people.

It's pretty rare that something I've written is close to something that's pre-existed.

I don't feel pressure to act like other people or rap like other people, because I just can't.

I like to tell my own story using my personality and my insight, the way I see things.

This goes for our songwriting as well as our success as a band - the minute we stopped chasing what we thought people wanted to hear and started writing things that moved us, that's when people started paying attention.

Just write what comes to you.