Richard Thompson Quotes

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

When I'm home on a break, I lock myself in my room and play guitar. After two or three hours, I start getting into this total meditation. It's a feeling few people experience, and that's usually when I come up with weird stuff. It just flows. I can't force myself. I don't sit down and say I've got to practice.

For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.

Wintertime for me is a time when I do a lot of my writing in the studio. It's a time I enjoy. And it's very reflective and a very calming time of the year. Throughout the year I gather a lot of musical inspirations, and this is where I bring them to the studio and see what will evolve musically.

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

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

I'm by no means a pianist. I think that's safe to say, but the piano, for me, I would say it's the enabler. It gave me what I needed and gives me what I need in order to write a song. And I think playing or improvising on the piano is where I feel most liberated and sort of less conscious of all my insecurities or inadequacies.

I'm not the kind of guy who sits around at home and writes songs. Once in a while I'll pick up a guitar and noodle around, but it's rare.

It is the most delightful thing that ever happens to me, when I hear something coming out of my guitar and out of my mouth that wasn't there before.

I just play, and I'm always trying to write songs.

I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips.

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

When people think of someone being prolific, it's like, 'He's got a vault with 5,000 songs in it,' or something, but I just kind of pick them out of the air when they float by.

If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.

My goal is to think of nothing when I'm writing a song because too many influences could sabotage a potentially amazing song.

I think the best riffs and the best songs come when you're jamming and having a good time.

Music was never just a hobby for me. I'd pick up a guitar every day to work on whatever I was writing at the time. I would put my ideas in songs the way some people might put them in diaries or journals.

Michael came home and asked, Would you like to write a song with me? I got this idea for a title called A Kiss at the End of a Rainbow. So we had a couple glasses of wine and wrote it.

I love going into the studio with just an idea of the direction. Like, I want this tempo... I love to start from scratch, and the tracks sort of take on a life of their own.

I started playing guitar when I was 13. I'd written a few songs on the guitar over some time. I'd written a book of poetry, and I got a book of lyrics that I had when I was a kid.

Sometimes, entire songs are ready in just about five minutes.

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.

When I'm at home creating music, I usually wind up laughing. It's always, like, funny - like, what the hell did I just write?

When I wrote 'Grand Illusion,' I was making it up as we went along. I wrote this stuff and tried to do the best job I could.

Every time somebody asks me, 'Oh, when you mix your own music, what are you going to make?' And I don't know.