Lucinda Williams Quotes

Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is not to say it is either confessional or memoir. Simply, it is real.

I think that people respond to honesty in music, so I only choose songs that are the truth for me.

Music to me is about being honest, and it's what I've always pictured music as. I don't see the point of expressing yourself if you are going to be cryptic about it.

It's just about being honest. I listen to a lot of stuff that's out there, some of which I wrote, and I'm like, 'Where is that? Where's the honesty?' So that's what I want to get to in my music now.

I want to be remembered as an artist that gave you a piece of me, as opposed to some surface bullshit. I just want to be remembered as a poet that was open and honest because I wake up every morning and I'm me.

I love 'I'm British But...' It's such a sweet, innocent, open-hearted film, and it has the sort of openness that I still aspire to with everything I do. It wears its heart, head, everything on its sleeve.

If I'm not writing songs about things I've actually been through, it ruins the idea of making music to me.

I think I have great responsibility, and when I do my music, when I try to relate to my audience, I just try to do it in an honest fashion, you know, just try to be as earnest as possible and sometime it may be self-effacing. Sometimes it may be finger-pointing. Sometimes it may be beautiful, and sometime it may be ugly.

I decided at 15 that I didn't want to be one of those artists that gets up and sings love songs they don't mean. I decided that I was going to be me to the fullest extent, that my songs were going to reflect relationships I've had, things I've been through, and even the stuff I'm embarrassed about.

The only honest and generous thing for me to do is to give people myself. That's all I've got as an artist, so I want to do that in an unflinching way.

I feel, as a songwriter, it's one of the hardest things to do - to sit down and say how you feel.

I feel what I sing, and I sing what I feel. Really, that's all I can do.

I've found that in now having experienced what it's like to make records and just through growing up in general that you should be expressive about what's affecting you instead of trying to sing about a subject just for the sake of other people getting something from it.

My work has always been about authentic feeling, and I think we live in a time where we need that.

I know this sounds phony, but I don't start out on a project going, 'I'm going to make an emotional work,' you know what I mean? You try to tell the story directly and honestly and with passion.

I don't have to put on a front. If I had to, it would be difficult and tiring.

Sometimes it is hard to sing and dance at the same time, but I would rather be off and be real and genuine about it to my fans.

As long as it feels valid to me and feels sincere, I'll do what I do under the moniker of Nine Inch Nails if it's appropriate. I would hate to think I would ever be in a position where I'm faking it to get a paycheck.

It's so easy for me to do a boy-bashing pop song, but to sit down and write honestly about something that's really close to me, something I've been through, it's a totally different thing.

No notes. You speak from deep in your heart. It's easy.

I say what's in my heart, and I do it in my concerts.

If Rihanna stripped it all down morally rather than with her clothes, perhaps we'd get closer to Nina Simone. She's talented, but all we want is to sing the truth. If Britney Spears was to sing closer to her heart, she might have been the new Bobby Gentry or Dolly Parton.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what's really happening to me, even if it's a tough pill to swallow for people around me... I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

I feel as though there are things that I'm trying to do - you know, capturing truthfully some aspect of human experience - and I'm trying really hard not to be fake. And in writing, as in life, it's harder than you think.

If I can't be honest with music, forget it.