Bonnie McKee Quotes

The Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookie was an unexpected, unplanned pop culture phenomena. My father went from star-maker to star.

The fate of a song is often established in the first 15 minutes of writing.

I'm never sure if I'll ever write another song, what the song will be about and if what initially sparked the beginning of a song might complete it.

All of a sudden there's a song - there in your hotel room playing your guitar - and you write it, and two or three years later it will come true. It keeps you on your toes.

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"].

There's a feeling that you get when you write songs where... it feels like it's destined to do something. Then sometimes you get that feeling with a song and it never goes anywhere, that happens all the time too, so you never really know.

I don't know anyone who sits down to write a song hit except Irving Berlin. He can't help writing hits.

I would never sit and write a song in front of anyone, because you're so vulnerable. I don't know at what point in the process that it becomes acceptable to pass them on. When a song wants to be written, it will be written. When it does come, I will very rarely go back and edit lyrics. I'm quite a rational human being, and the only part of my life that I can't rationalise, or can't make sense of, is how a song gets written or why.

Whenever I write a song I see the whole song anyway.

Whenever a songwriter writes a big hit, then the next 20 songs they write - no matter how bad they are - get recorded.

I think that the song, the song "Stand By Me" is one of those songs that... and someone asked me, what was you thinking about or what was you feeling about? It's something that, songwriters just write songs. It's like an artist that paints. They paint what they feel. It's not, it's not about how many of these painting I'll sell it's just how they feel at the moment. And that's how I wrote "Stand By Me".

Lonnie says it doesn't take long to write a song if you're stricken with a severe case of the Tennysons. He wasn't necessarily talking about a chart-climber.

I think from a major-label perspective, if you were on the flip side of things and that's the world you were used to working in, your interpretation could be, "Oh, they're having trouble writing songs," when really it's like, "No, I'm not ready to write songs, I don't want to write a song right now, if I did write a song, it would be forced."

When I start to write a song, I have the words and I have the melody, and then it's just a matter of making it to the end. I think if I have something that I could identify as a talent, it would be that I can finish a song. I kind of know intuitively where the melody should go.

To create an album of 12 songs, I've got to write about 80 songs. Half of those are totally weird and rubbish.

I write a lot on airplanes actually because it's completely isolating; there's no one to talk to, there's nothing to do. And then I think a lot of it sort of comes out sitting down with the people I'm co-writing with and talking to them about what I'm going through and what I want to say. It just sort of happens; every song came about in a completely different yet organic way.

I've been writing songs since I was a wee child.

I have enjoyed writing songs for so long... it felt like in order to make music that I could relate to myself, I would have to be a part of the writing process.

I don't force it. If you don't have an idea and you don't hear anything going over and over in your head, don't sit down and try to write a song. You know, go mow the lawn...My songs speak for themselves.

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

I do like writing songs in a band. When it's rock, it's such a different kind of dynamic, obviously.

I just never really thought of not being involved, because when I write the songs I take them to a certain place and by that point I kinda know what I want them to sound like.

I hope people hear my songs and realize that writing music is kind of easy, or that taking your sadness and turning it into a beautiful song is worthwhile.

I was writing "Diamonds and Rust' and it had nothing to do with what it turned out to be. I don't remember what it is, but I think I was writing a song. It was literally interrupted by a phone call, and it just took another curve and it came out to be what it was.

I got a new 4-track cassette recorder a year or so after high school. For a while I would just stare at it thinking, how am I going to do this if I don't play guitar or keyboards? How am I going to write and record a song if I don't know how to play any instruments? I mean, I played the violin, but I didn't know anything about how to work a 4-track.