Ryan Adams Quotes

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.

I have been no more than a medium, as it were.

The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation. I can't contrive a song.

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.

I don't write songs, songs write me.

When I'm recording, which is synonymous with writing, I'll play things over and over again until it sounds like I've got the right guitar part. Whereas I think, as the much younger player I tended to do things much more consciously. I didn't wait for the moment where inspiration might strike. That's what I do now. I wait for it to naturally start to replay itself in my mind. As I say, I don't force it. So I like to think of myself as a receiver. I'm a telephone line to who knows where, but until I hear it through that receiver, I don't usually do it. It's got to start writing itself somehow.

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

There's not a lot of thinking that I need to do away from the studio on Broken Bells stuff.

When I'm writing a song, I'm just making stuff up as I go along.

I find it very difficult to compose when I'm not playing.

I probably wrote three-quarters of the songs without an instrument in my hands.

It was spontaneously composed as I was playing it. And then I added a couple of other overdub textures on top of it after the fact. But it's one of those things where I wouldn't be able to sit down and specifically write that. That's just what came out.

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

I'm never happier than when I'm being creative, whether that's with Coldplay or other artists. I just love being in the studio.

There's a relationship between music and spirituality and inspiration and to a certain extent improvisation that draws me in, because I don't totally understand it. I know that those relationships have been telling me, since I started making records, where to go. What to write down.

It's funny, man, sometimes you record something that you plan on re-doing later, but then when you listen back to it, you decide to keep it because you realize that it's gonna be real tough to beat!

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.

The words that I'm most happy with are the ones that come from my subconscious rather than my conscious. They just feel right. I think that's the same with music, really. If you're doing an album, there's ten or eleven sets of lyrics, so you get to the point of inspiration ten or eleven times - it's difficult.

I feel like there are things that inspire the music, and then there's the music itself. I don't feel like I always need to force them together.

The songs will come as they come, and I'm excited because I haven't gotten to be really creative in a while. I'm excited to get back and do what I do and just write a song.

'Flying In A Blue Dream' was quite automatic. I was working on another song, and I took a break and picked up my acoustic guitar, tuned it strangely, and instantly wrote the tune. It's funny how you can struggle with one piece and write a better one in a minute. Usually, when things come easy, it means it's good.

I can only write songs when somebody gives me some water to swim in. Otherwise, I'm a fish on the beach.

There's no way to learn how to write a hit song. There's no formula for it. You just have to have it inside of you.

It took time to learn that the hard thing about writing is to let the story write itself, while one sits at the typewriter and does as little thinking as possible. It happened over and over again, and the beginner learned - when you start puzzling over an idea, and slowing down on the keys, the writing gets worse and worse.

I do more writing by myself than with anybody else. My best thing is sitting...around somewhere with a guitar, and having an idea. You never know where it'd come from. Songwriting is a God-given talent.