Greg Iles Quotes

Listen to the Bee Gees and you can learn to be a great writer.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

Melody is king, and don't you ever forget it. Lyrics appear to be out front, but they're not; they're just an accompanying factor. If they're good, you're really in good shape. Lyrics are written to be rewritten.

The music is the main thing and it's just as easy to write acceptable words.

Words are important to me, but a song can work and function and be a good song with words that are fairly standard. But really great lyrics can't rescue a dog of a song.

I think writing is the most underrated thing in Hollywood.

The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.

I'm always writing; my phone is full of ideas - melodies and lyrics and stuff.

I enjoy writing. I enjoy that kind of process.

For Stevie, the words are of prime importance; the song moves around the words, rather than the words moving around the song.

I just don't write musically, but lyrically, yeah I write.

I was always a writer, by which I mean I was always scribbling away, doing something with pen and paper.

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn't that spectacular.

I'd say almost that words come first, melody second.

I'm not like a professional writer with professional skills. Songs kind of come into my head the same way they did when I was a kid. I say I'm an overgrown kindergarten kid. I work on songs.

I write everything. It's my favorite part of what I do. And lyrics are my favorite thing.

Making music and writing kind of come from the same creative place.

Of course, you can't teach songwriting. You can only encourage people to do it and help them to sort out for themselves what they want to achieve, and get a list of exercises together that improves the craft and gives them more access to the craft of writing good songs.

You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies.

It's not just music. To me, it's songwriting more than anything. A lot of people say it's expression, but to me, it's more than that.

Writing 'The Spirit' is really fun.

My songs are somewhere between story and situation. There's also character and mood. I'm an intuitive writer, both with instrumentals and songs with words.

I find it really easy to write on the bass, because you kind of get straight to the point: you do lyrics and melody without thinking about decorating the song until after you've finished it.

People don't stress enough that when they're writing lyrics, they are writing.

When I write a song, I get the melody right first, and then hopefully I can back it up with a lyric that has to respect the melody.