Bruce Cockburn Quotes

I'm one of those people that I make a song... then I write another song and then I'm like, 'But this song is so much better than this song,' and then I kind of ditch that song. It's a long process.

I'm an extremely slow worker, very unprolific. It can take me weeks to do a three-minute song, or at least to make it sound, in my mind, like I haven't written it. That's when I'm satisfied.

If you are an artist and you are honest, you are never good enough.

I'm the most indecisive person in the world. I'll do three versions of a song, then think, "Is the demo better?"

I've spent so long on some paintings that I no longer know what to think of them, and I am definitely getting harder to please; nothing satisfies me.

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

I have tried to write songs quickly that get scrapped. I've also taken a long time on songs that get scrapped because you can over-think something, and you've squeezed the life out of it. As opposed to work of art, it looks like a really great work of craftsmanship.

I don't really analyze my process. I do know that if it's not right, I won't move on. I'm tenacious to a fault about that.

I used to play works in progress to people, but now I wait 'til it's finished, because you make excuses all the time: 'Well, there's gonna be an orchestra on it.' Rather than make excuses, wait 'til it's finished, and then they can say they don't like it.

A face in the picture would bother me, so I'd rub it out with the turpentine and do it over.

To be honest, making albums is really never easy. It's always a bit excruciating because there's always this fight to make it great, and then you hit these stumbling blocks along the way.

To be honest, I rewrote 'Wicked Nights' a number of times. I just wasn't happy with the end result.

It took a long while for me to even put out a record because there were so many options of how to do a song, and in some respects, I'm never totally happy with the outcome.

I'm so hard on myself that when I'm in the studio, I'll write 10 songs and only use one. So those nine songs that are left over, I always think, 'Where could these go? Who could they be for?'

For me to create an album of 12 songs, I've got to write about 80 songs. Half of those are totally weird and rubbish. But I get to some really good stuff after a while.

I just mean it's very difficult for me to watch my work, in some ways, because I am critical of what I didn't get across or I thought I was making one point.

I'll probably never put out another album because I'm a tough critic of my work, and I don't think I could come up to those standards any more.

One of the most important things for me in terms of my working method is doubt. I get very insecure about my ideas. And I don't say 'insecure' in kind of a paranoid way. I mean just: 'Are they good enough?' 'Is this the right thing to do?' I really beat myself up over that.

Most artists are notoriously insecure, and I fall into that category.

I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it.

When I create something, it's got to be special, and it can't just be to throw something out there because I feel like I'm Missy.

I rarely like the music I make. It's like nothing's good enough. I just stay in my head, waiting on the next best beat, so I can do something better than what I did.

I can't just go into the studio with one idea and be all in on that, 100 percent. It takes me a while to arrive at something that feels like it's finished.

Some songs just fall out of you. And some you have to wrestle out like an abscess.

I think being creative is incredibly difficult and painful.