Syd Barrett Quotes

I'm always writing lyrics. I have so many lyrics on so many stray pieces of paper. Everywhere.

Writing a song is much like being an author. Yes, we all have tools to write (everyone has a brain I hope!), but that doesn't all of a sudden make us best selling authors.

I think in most cases, when you're writing a song, you're just making up a little story, and you're not really thinking about making a point one way or another about it. You're just coming up with a little scenario and seeing it through, and that's it.

I have a huge note on my phone where things just start popping up. It doesn't make that much sense to me at the time, but once a song is finished, I can read into it and figure out who the characters are in my life.

[The lyrics and melody] usually come a little simultaneously, but I would say the lyrics are first; usually I have the idea for a story in my head, or few lines.

Seriously, my music really does help my acting, and, like, getting in and out of a character from a different lifestyle and writing a song about it. Likewise, my acting inspires the music because I can write a theme that I wouldn't necessarily approach at all in life.

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 wrote 'She's a Lady' on the back of a TWA menu, flying back from London after doing Tom Jones's TV show. Jones's manager wanted me to write him a song. If I have an idea and I don't have a pad of paper, I'll write on whatever is available. What's the difference? Paper is paper.

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

Everybody has ideas. The vital question is, what do you do with them? My rock musician sons shape their ideas into music. My sister takes her ideas and fashions them into poems. My brother uses his ideas to help him understand science. I take my ideas and turn them into stories.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

It's pretty amazing to write under any circumstances when someone gives you an assignment to write a song, even if it doesn't get accepted. I've written songs a couple of times, some for Disney, that haven't actually ended up in their films, but then you're left with a song forever.

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.

Sometimes I get ideas for lyrics in anyplace, but I work a lot in the studio. So I collect little bits of lyrics. I go through the box of lyrics I have and see if something fits.

Sometimes my lyrics may describe a situation that happened to a friend. Other times, I create a story from the ground up.

I've already got notebooks full of ideas for new music, so I'm gonna kind of nurture that just like I do all of my ideas and perfect it until it's ready and then I'll just let it go.

I tend to have an endless number of ideas for writing projects. I don't necessarily say that as a good thing. Maybe it's a good thing, but I have ideas for all kinds of projects: contemporary novels, graphic novels, anything that happens to go through my mind.

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

A lot of times, I don't feel responsible for the songs myself. But that's my job or my place in life: to keep my search and catch the ideas before they pass me by.

I keep this crazy notebook of song ideas.

After that, I specifically started writing lyrics. I would like sweat and think and get it all together.

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

I never dreamed that the little ditties I wrote about annoying customers or bagel recipes would turn into a full-length musical comedy. But a very wise person told me to 'write what you know'. So I did.

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.

For me, making music just starts with a simple melody, and lyrics will come sometime after that.