Jack Kerouac Quotes

Many artists, when they are creating art, are searching for a vehicle that can manifest a feeling they have inside of themselves.

I don’t have a problem baring my emotions in music. That’s one of the reasons I’m glad to have music in my life. I’m pretty resilient as far as being a human being. A lot of songs write themselves.

As a youngster when I started writing and stuff, I did actually write more from other people's perspectives. When I hit 18 and something happened to me that hurt me, I discovered that writing the truth is really therapeutic and amazing. Every single one of my songs is about something very personal to me and I could tell anyone what it's about, each song. Like a diary, basically.

One of the things that's complicated about writing anything is that it's an act of narcissism, and then of course once it sails out into the world, you have to let go of it.

Every time I felt the pain coming on I'd go downstairs and hammer out an idea. After a few months I started to take a look at what I was making, I had for the first time in my life written a large grip of songs completely alone and without any expectations or plans of what they would be for.

Writing a song doesn't heal things. Even if the song comes up with a solution, it's still only a theory. Going out and living my lyrics is a whole other deal. That takes courage.

When I look at the majority of my own songs they really came from my own sense of personal confusion or need to express some pain or beauty - they were coming from a universal and personal place.

Something impacts me emotionally, art is a kind of outlet, and I figure it's the same for a lot of artists. The way my mind deals with things is cinematic.

We all need ways to express ourselves, and poetry is one of mine.

My music comes from my emotion, always.

I think too many people edit themselves way too soon. There's plenty of time to edit, and it is a crucial part of it all, too.

You could take away the singing, and I am fine. But don't take away my gift of writing. It is the best way I can relate and express what I am feeling and what I am going through.

My identity started developing through the songs I was writing.

I've always loved both writing and songwriting. The journey is fascinating to me.

I write music about what's going on in my head, what I'm angry about, and what I think is wrong/right.

A lot of people say don't let bad vibes into the studio, but I love to. If you're having a bad day, write a song that feels like that.

When you're writing songs for yourself, as all artists do, it's about 'me.' It's about what you feel and your emotions. You're trying to get something out of your system about your experiences.

I'm finding that writing poetry is strengthening my songwriting, because you're learning to make a piece of writing work on a page with nothing else. I was also finding within poetry I felt a lot more free to write about very different matters, to write about social issues or things that are going on around me.

Marvin Gaye said there's a song inside of me and I can't get it out. And I know it's in there, and I can feel that it's in there, and I can't get it out. There's so much that I want to say, and I haven't been able to figure out how to say it in my art. I can only say it in ham-fisted, clumsy, nonpoetic ways, and I'm trying to figure out how to talk about life and talk about love and talk about pain and trials and tribulation in an artistic form.

The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.

A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

Writing is the only place I can be myself and not feel judged.

Whatever poetry that was in me was coming out in the form of constructing art books!

I try not to take on the weight or the burden of it. Once it's on the paper, I try to leave it, because I want to surrender to what I'm supposed to write about.

When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. This throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity.