Ben Harper Quotes

Sometimes a song can take up to a year to write, and because I waited that year and waited to work on it that day, it came up that extra 50 percent.

Song ideas have come to me in the middle of interviews, in the shower, or while I'm writing another song.

How does a person create a song? A lot of it is being open to encounter and to be in touch with the miraculous.

There's a lot of hurry up and wait. But it gives you time to write a song.

I don't find the songs; they find me. I just strum my guitar and wait for a lyric to come.

I called the guys from Promise of the Real, whom I've been playing with, and they were all on the road. Right after I hung up the phone, I wrote another song and started writing another, and I'm going, "Hey, I can't wait. I should be doing this now!" My experience tells me that when it's there, it's there, and you can't make it wait. So I got Jimmy Keltner and Paul Bushnell, two good guys, and went in and did this record ["Peace Trail"].

I have a hard time memorizing stuff. I'm always in the process of writing a new song, so trying to learn a new one takes a minute.

Any time I write a new song, I am jazzed about it for like 24 hours and then I am over it and want to write another one.

Sometimes touring can warp reality because you're never in one place long enough to get a feel for it. You don't interact with people long enough to know what real life is. That's why a lot of artists write songs about longing and missing people when they're on the road. I do my best to keep my mind open and I read a lot when I'm on tour, so I hope I have good things to write about. I'm constantly in the songwriting process.

Every song that I start to write, I wonder if I'll be able to write it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.

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

I try to read a lot and listen to a lot of good songwriters, and I try to actually work on the craft of writing a song rather than just leaving it up to inspiration.

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.

I sleep with a notebook next to me, and most nights I sleep with my guitar next to me.

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

You never know what little idea or joke, what flame flickering really quickly, will become a song. That first idea, it can come any time. If it's in Spanish, you go on in Spanish. If it's in French, French. If it's in English, English. Or Portuguese. I'll try to do my best. I like Italian, though I don't speak it much.

You can't write a song out of thin air you have to feel and know what you are writing about.

I'm not sure if the next song I write is going to be about love or a song about a tree.

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.