Tori Amos Quotes

How lucky is the man who, like Mozart and others, goes to the tavern of an evening and writes some fresh music. For he lives while he is creating.

Oh yes, much, because music is just something that comes to you. You don't question it.

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

I write the vocals last, because I wanted to invent the music first and push the music to the level that I had to compete against it.

Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn't have anything to do with me, but it's just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears.

There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.

There's a song called 'All We'd Ever Need,' which is actually the first song that the three of us wrote together on our first album, and when we wrote that song I didn't have any real experience to pull from.

Music is a big influence in my work and sometimes drives the energy of where I want to go.

Ultimately, I'm a fan of music. I describe writing music sometimes as hieroglyphics, like, you know, excavating, gently brushing off these artifacts and discovering the song underneath it all. It seems as if it is already written in it.

I have no reason to sit home and write songs all day without going out and playing for the folks. And I have no reason to go play for the folks unless I'm writing new songs so they can sort of feed off one another. And I just try to do the best I can.

I never think about rhythm versus melody; I've always just played to what's in my head.

You just don't wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

Emotions are the fuel to really move you along - that's the only way you can create music. If you don't feel any emotions, it's not going to happen.

I don't think I approach my songs differently from other artists. You get a big picture of it, and you imagine the song and hear and feel it, and that big picture is like a snapshot, and it comes to you as fast as it takes to click a camera.

Sometimes I think that I want to do something strictly basic, really simple. Just with a few chords. But I won't have anything more than two or three sentences in my head. That kind of evaporates once I start playing and then it goes off in whatever direction.

There is no formula to it. Writing every song is a little journey. The first note has to lift you.

Whatever I hear in my head is what I play.

I usually have an idea of how I want a song to sound, but I don't always know how to get there.

In my off-time, I do record. Once in a while, I'll just go into the studio if there's a really good song that I have in my head and want to do. I think, as artists, you're constantly in creative motion. If I stopped writing songs, then that's a part of me that would stop in my life, and I need constant motion.

I probably get most of my inspiration through music.

Those emotions that are really strong, the ones that inspire a song, you can hold onto that. You can let it marinate for years and keep writing about it even better than you did then.

The source is always me, but when the inspiration is an amazing idea or entity, it gives the process of music making a very beautiful route to proceed on.

I'm suspicious of the idea of categories in music and this idea of things being in boxes. To me, that seems unnatural. I write the music that somebody with my biography would write, and the thing that's always driven me is an enthusiasm for the material. I sort of follow the notes to where they want to go.

Live music is where you get the inspiration and the creativity.

Collaboration is part of what keeps me interested in music.