Barry Mann Quotes

I never wrote music or arranged songs or lyrics when I was under the influence of anything but coffee. That's not gone away.

My brain never turns off of songwriting. Every conversation, everything I see, I'm just kind of like a sponge and I soak it up.

I get a lot of my songwriting done while driving around Nashville - sometimes it comes to me that way.

As a songwriter, you try your best to write a good song, and you like nothing better than hearing a good song. It's easy to admire a great song, and you want to share out of enthusiasm.

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

Seriously, my music really does help my acting, and, like, getting in and out of a character from a different lifestyle and writing a song about it. Likewise, my acting inspires the music because I can write a theme that I wouldn't necessarily approach at all in life.

I love working and writing new songs. But sometimes you need to wait, to have something in your mind, and then you can let yourself play music.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I'd written? Yes. There's many of them!

I'd listen to all the stuff that was going on around me and drift off into my fantasies about it. My fantasies have fuelled all the songs I've ever written.

Nothing pleases me more than to go into a room and come out with a piece of music.

In songwriting, I needed language. And I always believed in singing about what I do.

I've already got notebooks full of ideas for new music, so I'm gonna kind of nurture that just like I do all of my ideas and perfect it until it's ready and then I'll just let it go.

My songwriting process, and maybe loads of other people's, is just this sort of smashing together of emotions and stuff to make some music. It's kind of simple and really complex at the same time and, as you can see, incredibly hard to explain.

I never set out to write a certain kind of song, I just play my guitar and see if I catch something.

I don't write a great song every day. I don't write a great song every couple weeks. It comes in such random times.

I've been a list maker for years, even before I was a musician. I was always writing things down and kept long lists of things that would make good album titles and things like that. I'm constantly thinking in terms of songwriting.

I enjoy songwriting. It's slow-motion improvising.

Some of the best songs I've written, I've written in 10 minutes.

I've never forgotten a single record I cut or a song I wrote.

I'm writing songs to perform, to entertain. And when I'm really trying to get inspired, I go backwards, and I just rap.

I found it was really impossible for me to write songs when I couldn't sing.

I wrote my first song when I was 54 years old.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I'd just write.

You can only follow what's on your mind. In fact, a song is something you write because you can't sleep unless you write it.

I always was songwriting in high school, writing songs while I was supposed to be listening to the teacher.