Bryce Dessner Quotes

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

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

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.

We all love to sing, and when we sit down to write a song I think it kind of shows itself to us.

It's true when they say songwriting is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. In truth, what happens is... songs comes through you.

People ask what was the first piece of music I wrote. There was no first piece.

I can almost always write music; at any hour of the twenty-four, if I put pencil to paper, music comes.

The songs come along at their own pace when they are ready.

I don't get my inspiration from a specific source. It's more like if you listen to a good tune, it gives me inspiration to write a better tune.

If at noon you sit down and there's just silence or blank tape, in an hour if you have a song, that didn't exist an hour ago. Now it exists and it might exist for a long time. There's something empowering about that.

I'm not the sort of chap who can sit down and write music. When it comes, I'm happy.

It all comes together. It's - that's the way it's always worked for me with songwriting.

Songs do write themselves through you; I know people find it hard to believe, but it's true.

I don't think we ever really think about it when we're doing it, because if you sort of go in with a plan of attack, it tends to take away the natural rhythm of songwriting.

I usually start with a lyric and see where that takes me.

When I'm writing [songs], some days the pen just goes. I'm not in charge and I'm almost listening outside of it. That's when I realize that we all have to start looking at life as a gift. It's like listening to a color and believing that these colors have soul mates and once you get them all together the painting is complete.

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.

I found songwriting really hard at first, but after a while it was actually very easy.

I usually dream of melodies. When I wake up I have them in my head. I usually come up with things in the middle of the night because that's when my mind is the quietest. I always have my tape recorder, pen and pad by my bed just in case.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

I write when I have to; I write when the song is done and I deal with the idea and I just go with it and I'll become what that song is all about until I have finished it. And when you do that, it makes the song more visual, it makes it more personal.

When you're in the middle of writing a song, you can come up with this whole web of stuff only you know how to get through. That's very entertaining for me to do that.

I love writing music, but it seems I'm always writing words, so I don't get much time to do it.

Even when I don't think I'm writing, I'm writing. There's some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it's collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that's when they come out.

You never know what's going to play into what's worthy of getting encapsulated into a song.