Joan Baez Quotes

It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born.

I'm creating songs. I do it most of the time, in the car or in the house.

I like the process of writing songs. It makes me feel good.

I've been writing a lot of songs in twos, songs that are like twins in my mind.

There are still songs that I'm writing. I like to write. I like to take a long time to do my songs, not even the actual writing process, but conceptualizing, getting into the songs. That's why I stopped doing mixtapes.

No matter how many people try, no matter how many fancy songwriters in Los Angeles try to break it down to a formula... to an extent, there isn't a science to writing great songs, I suppose.

It varies, I don't think there is any one set way of writing songs or coming up with ideas, it comes in so many ways you know.

When I write a song today, basically it goes on the stage tomorrow. That's the way it works. You cannont interrupt your consciousness; it all comes from the subconscious, it can happen anywhere. It could be in a telephone booth.

As for me, I rarely write a song. But when I do write a song, like "Ain't No Chimneys in the Projects," which came to me at three a.m. one morning, on a whim - I get a percentage.

When I get an idea for a song it would gel in my mind for weeks or months, and then one day just like that, Ill write it.

I feel happy about the songs I've written. I'm a great lover of the craft of songwriting, and I sure admire it in other people when I see it - past and present. I feel comfortable with what I have accomplished. I feel happy to be able to work in that environment, and that I have a lot of songs left to be written, somewhere.

Writing a song is like - you're writing a song all the time. It's just when it pops out. It's been there all the time. It's not something that suddenly you do it. It's always there. Suddenly, it's in the right mixture inside you to come out. Usually when you're writing on the piano or a guitar, you don't write in lyrics, on their own. To me it's very boring.

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.

I always try to write the best song I can in the moment, and those songs are often going to end up on Death Cab for Cutie records. I don't set out to write a solo song or write a band song. I just write, and where that songs ends up is kind of TBD.

Sometimes it starts with a random lyric idea that sets the tone for the whole song. Chords and sounds build from the lyric and rhythm, kind of. Sometimes it's a track I fall I love with... but writing my own songs, I rarely write on tracks.

I am always writing music. I have got unlimited ideas because I have been clean and sober for my entire life.

Sometimes I start with lyrics - rarely - but sometimes I might have an idea for some lyrics that I wanna say. I write them down and figure out how to use that in a melody to write a song.

The fate of a song is often established in the first 15 minutes of writing.

I'm never sure if I'll ever write another song, what the song will be about and if what initially sparked the beginning of a song might complete it.

I think when you're making an album, as the songs are piling up, one of the good things about it is that you will often write the song that you need.

You can't write a song out of thin air you have to feel and know what you are writing about.

We write so many songs, it is difficult to narrow them down.

If you wanna write a song, ask a guitar

I don't write songs, songs write me. ... Writing a song can be agony or ecstasy. It can take half an hour or half a year. ... The popular song is America's greatest ambassador.

I have a few songs that I'm figuring out and writing. I'm still figuring out the whole concept and how it's gonna connect to Cry Baby, but I have some ideas, yes.