Tony Oller Quotes

Sometimes when you're writing a song and that song comes into your head, it definitely comes from somewhere, like a real experience.

The cool thing about being a songwriter, or a writer, I guess, in general, you can take on a lot of different things, experience a lot of different things, just by writing about them.

In songwriting, I needed language. And I always believed in singing about what I do.

I think a lot of songwriters would agree that it's often easier to find inspiration in misery.

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 songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I'm teeming with the drive to write.

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 can't write music unless I'm deeply connected to it and that connection almost always comes from some experience that I have had or am having.

Most of my songs are written about movies or TV shows - they're not about me.

The writing process for us is different with every song. Sometimes they come from our lives, or someone else we know may be going through something that we choose to write about.

Most of the really good songs are dead true. ... It had to have happened to have the song be there. Every time I've tried to make stuff up it just kind of falls flat. So the majority of my work is something that happened to me, I saw happen to someone else, or a friend of mine told me happened. There is a certain amount of theatrical and poetic license. People are supposed to like it, that's why you're doing it. It's supposed to be fun. It's not brain surgery, it's heart surgery. They're just songs.

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 found songwriting really hard at first, but after a while it was actually very easy. I wrote about everyday stuff.

You're always going to write and draw inspiration from things that you're feeling, things that you've felt. It's kind of impossible not to unless you're writing a song and there's an exact scenario that you're trying to write a song for.

For me, how I feel about what I wrote down turns into a song.

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

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.

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.

I write when I have to; I write when the song is done and I deal with the idea and I just go with it and I'll become what that song is all about until I have finished it. And when you do that, it makes the song more visual, it makes it more personal.

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

I just sit down and the page just comes out and I look at it and the elements that appear on that page have a lot to do with what's going on in my life.

My template for most songs is 'Is this inspiring?' and with the blues it so often is.

You never know what's going to play into what's worthy of getting encapsulated into a song.

Nothing is more rewarding than to take a song, create it out of thin air and then watch it affect people.

Sure, you always put some of your own experience into a film.