Robert Smith Quotes

When I finished a song that I thought was good, I thought, I don't know where that came from, so I have no idea if I can do that again. I'm talking like, a hundred and fifty songs down the line. I still feel that.

I've never really suffered complete and utter writer's block, really. I equate it with sex: in the beginning of my career, I was writing five songs a week; now, I occasionally write a song. But it's an exciting moment when it happens!

I'm getting bored performing the same songs over and over. Songwriting comes and goes.

As I get older, I don't aggressively pursue songs. All the great ones just appear.

The day I run out of ideas is the day I stop making records.

If you write songs long enough, you run out of material that's original to yourself.

It's gotta feel natural. I'm always into that, and after awhile, if I am working on a song too long and trying to make something out of it that it's not... it's best just to stop and move on.

For years and years, I would sit in my studio, and I wouldn't have any inspiration. I'd write one or two songs a year.

There was this song I was working on called 'Swing.' It was almost finished, but there was something missing, and I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. And then this little piece of information - this little tweet - came to the forefront of my mind.

I don't generally listen to music while working, but sometimes music can help me get past minor writer's block.

I get so many ideas for songs, but I'm so seldom disciplined enough to sit down and crank them out.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

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 can't just sit down and make a song in a day. It's only possible if you focus on the music and not the sound.

Songwriting's never been a natural art for me; it's always been a bit of a struggle.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don't really know what we're doing and when we do, it doesn't seem to help.

I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people.

There are all sorts of reasons why I don't do much work in the theatre, the main one being that after two performances I feel I've given all I can. I hate repetition, I really do. It's like asking a painter to paint he same picture every day of his life.

Sometimes I'll sing the same verse through the entire song, because the other verses aren't clicking. And when they do come to me, I'm in the middle of that same verse!

You can't manufacture inspiration, so a lot of it is still a waiting game for me. There's still a lot of mystery to songwriting. I don't have a method that I can go back to - they either come or they don't.

I try to think of it not as writer's block, but a time where you just need to live life and experience things so you have something to write about.

I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry.

That's what makes writer's block so painful. You think the well has run dry, maybe somewhere in the heavens the tap has been turned off. That's beyond frightening.

I can only speak for myself - there were times when I just wasn't inspired by creating music.