Angela Bowie Quotes

I can't take credit for the success of my songs.

That’s why I hate to take credit for the songs I’ve written. I feel that somewhere, someplace, it’s been done and I’m just a courier bringing it into the world.

I, therefore, O Caesar, do not publish this work, merely prefixing my name to a treatise which of right belongs to others, nor think of acquiring reputation by finding fault with the works of any one.

Wynton and Christopher were really great experiences for me because they are both very gifted artists.

Why would I want to sound like Joni Mitchell? I've got Joni Mitchell records, and they're great, and I couldn't possibly be that good.

If what I do prove well, it won't advance. They'll say it's stolen, or else it was by chance.

… his [Charles Evans Hughes’] greatest fault is his failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done. This is a great weakness in any man. I think it was one of the strongest things about [Theodore] Roosevelt. He never tried to minimize what other people did and often exaggerated it..

I don't sit down to write a number one hit. I'm not that good at my job - I don't know how to do that.

There are some people who are just plain great at making music. That's not who I am.

The Great don't innovate, they fertilize seeds planted by lackeys, they leave to others the inhaling of the flowers whose roots they've manured. A deceptive memory may be the key to their originality.

It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing-and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite - that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.

If you take the credit, you lose it. If you give away the credit, it comes back multiplied.

I try never to focus on the radio, just find great songs, find emotion and just write the best songs you can. I think when you get fixated on trying to do something too accurate, it becomes more washed out and less what you intended it to be. So I think each time the challenge for me is to try and reinvent a little bit.

If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you steal from many it's research.

When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I'd written? Yes. There's many of them!

Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.

I am not trying to change the world. I am just offering my gift that God gave me, and if somebody is moved by it, that's beautiful.

We all love people who give credit to others for their success. Companies would probably do better with CEOs who didn't blow their own horn and ask for ridiculous salaries and new yachts every year.

I write the songs and hand it over to the world and see what happens. But the things that I've written for people that have been hits, I don't know that I would have directed them in the right path, but they definitely wound up on the right path.

Anybody can put things together that belong together. to put things together that don't go together, and make it work, that takes genius like Mozart's. Yet he is presented in the play Amadeus as a kind of silly boy whom the gods loved.

No one was creating and I always wanted to be created on.

Humility is becoming a lost art, but it's not difficult to practice. It means that you realize that others have been involved in your success.

I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.

For years, I was watching other people have so much fun playing out their version of authorship, like Louis C.K. and Larry David. As I watched them do their thing, I began to pine for the days when I had a lot less expected of me and, often, a lot more creative freedom. The courage that those guys have is always captivating to me.