Garth Brooks Quotes

Songwriters tell the truth.

My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I'm a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to me, 'Girl, you make me see pictures in my head!' and I took that as a great compliment. That's exactly my intention.

I love the art form of songwriting. I get to carry a lot of vibes to a lot of people. My songs are all about the human condition, and people will be able to find themselves in my songs.

What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.

Songs give you incredible opportunity to convey a tremendous amount in a relatively short period of time.

That's what's amazing about songwriting: you can write a story that everyone connects to.

I'm a big fan of lyrics - lyrics are the thing that move me in certain ways.

I'm asking questions that most people are asking, but just putting a melody or a song to it.

Believing that navel-gazing in and of itself can transform itself into something that means something for society. I mean, we are communicative creatures. We desire to sort of understand each other's experiences and points of view. Storytelling is what painting, literature, filmmaking is all about.

A picture tells a thousand words. But you get a thousand pictures from someone's voice.

Having an open dialogue, in any creative atmosphere, is really important to feeling free to tell the story the best way you can.

The arts open your heart and mind to possibilities that are limitless. They are pathways that touch upon our brains and emotions and bring sustenance to imagination. Human beings' greatest form of communication, they walk in tandem with science and play, and best describe what it is to be human.

Among all the valuable things of this world, the word is the most precious. For in the word one can find a light which gems and jewels do not possess; a word may contain so much life that it can heal the wounds of the heart. Therefore, poetry in which the soul is expressed is as living as a human being. The greatest reward that God bestows on man is eloquence and poetry. This is not an exaggeration, for it is the gift of the poet that culminates, in time, with the gift of prophecy.

Rapping is talking and communicating, and that's always good.

Art... does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.

I just always try to find an interesting story and tell it well. That's a hard enough thing to do, whether it's a piece of fiction or it's a small piece of reality. I just look for good story.

The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.

Poetry isn't an efficient tool for preserving experience, any more than it's an efficient mode of communication, but who says that it should be efficient?

If I ever teach writing again, I’d say the first lesson is to listen.

I think of language as our first music.

What I do as a songwriter is a constant force in my life, that I'm grateful to have.

The most important thing to realize is that everyone is capable of telling a story.

I guess storytelling's always been in my blood. My mom said I was always dressing up and jumping in front of the camera and putting on plays. There must be a part of me that has to express that. If we were living in prehistoric clans, I'd probably be sitting by the campfire taking two stones and showing you how dinosaurs were chasing us. I'd be the one finding a way to communicate and perform.

Never be afraid of a cliché, if it expresses what you wish to say.

I'm so thankful I can write songs. I can capture all those memories in my songs and keep those memories alive.