Kerry King Quotes

It's not that I'm trying to write another '7 Years' or a new version of 'Mama Said.' Songs just kind of come out of nowhere, and you need to catch them when they do.

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 just love storytelling. I write music to tell stories. So when I'm done writing a song, I take it and go, 'Okay. How can I interpret these lyrics differently?' I love taking lyrics that were so close to me at a certain point in my life and then revamping them. I always want to take things to the next level.

I've always tended to write songs prolifically.

I don't have any particular methodology, to tell you the truth. 'Silver Blue' took exactly the amount of time to write that it takes to sing it, and 'Prisoner in Disguise' took about a year and a half. So you just never know.

I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind of way. And then as a few more lines get added and a piece gets added, eventually the song pretty much takes over and you can't really find a way to change those things.

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.

The goal is always just to write the best song that you can write. I mean, the process for writing a song is the process for writing a song. It's not something I look at it as something I need to do something different.

With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song.

When I'm writing songs, I write visually. When I'm writing the words down and I listen to the melody and the lyrics, I start seeing the video form. And if I can get through a song and from the beginning to the end have the whole video in my mind, I think that's a great song.

Songwriting is a burst of inspiration and then a long bit of work and a tremendous bit of desperation.

It feels like when novelists say they find their characters are doing things they never thought they'd do, the material comes alive, and that's how I feel making music.

I think that's the only way I know how to write songs, is to think about my life, and also to think about the words at the same time.

The first line of the song is always the hardest thing to write. And then after that, the song should - unless it sucks - it should write itself.

I see myself as a songwriter and a poet.

It can take me many months to write one of my own songs.

I actually wrote the lyrics for 'Goodbye' in 10 minutes.

I've never had trouble finding inspiration for new songs, no matter what I'm doing.

It doesn't necessarily take four years to write a good piece of music. It might take four hours. It just depends on when your inspiration comes.

I really don't do concept stuff very well. If I'm sitting thinking about what kind of song I want to write, within a few minutes, I'm kind of bored. It's just a personal thing for me.

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.

When I was writing 'Shotgun,' it's one of the first songs that's come to me as an image.

Sometimes I'll have an idea for a story or have a subject, and that will inspire lyrics, but most of the time, hopefully, they already exist somewhere else.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.