Bruce Cockburn Quotes

For me, making music is a continuous learning experience, and I think that it feeds itself.

My songwriting has evolved, just as I've evolved as a person.

I started school because I felt like, as a songwriter, I was operating solely on instinct, and I was having a hard time deciding exactly what words I wanted to use. I felt like I wanted to be a writer, and being a curious person, school felt like a way to solve the problems I was having with my own work.

I can put some chords together and maybe write a song, but I'm learning every day. And that's the fun part.

I feel like every time I write a song, it feels like the first time I wrote a song. It's just as hard; it doesn't get easier, but that's why I love it: because it's a challenge every time. I also feel like I'm learning new ways.

I just love storytelling. I write music to tell stories. So when I'm done writing a song, I take it and go, 'Okay. How can I interpret these lyrics differently?' I love taking lyrics that were so close to me at a certain point in my life and then revamping them. I always want to take things to the next level.

I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.

I saw I could rhyme words. It came simply to me. But I wrote some pretty horrible songs that I still have on tape.

Any time I sit down and write music, the first part of that is always centering myself and thinking about who I currently am.

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.

For the last three years, I've been working on 'Bromst,' and that's all that encompassed my brain. And now that it's out, it will change the way that I think musically.

I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.

The desire to write grows with writing.

I got a guitar when I was six and, instead of learning other people's songs, started to try to write my own, even at that young age.

I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.

I'm still learning my craft, and I've been writing since I was nine.

I remember when I wrote songs when I was about 16, they all sounded the same because I didn't know anything. And all the subject matter was all the same because I hadn't actually done much.

Were there stories I wrote along the way that were terrible clinkers? God, yes. But they were all a product of their time, and I did the best I could.

Writing 'Monitor Mix' was a very edifying and inspiring few years.

The stuff that I learned on 'Sons,' the education of how to tell stories, was part of that mythology. It's hard to look at it and go, 'Oh, if I knew this, I would have done it this way,' because the fact is I like to think that all that sort of unraveled as it was supposed to.

I'm just trying to work out how to write music now, because I've never had the opportunity where my number-one priority is writing music. I don't know how my brain works yet.

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

I remember, when I first rapped, I was writing raps. I don't write raps at all; I stopped early. I don't know - it seems like every day I find something a little bit easier.

Before I started writing for myself, I was writing country records, and they were coming out dope.

I teach songwriting a lot, and I always tell my students, 'You gotta write the little songs sometimes to get to the next big song in the chute.' You gotta write 'em to get to it. You never know what's going to be a little song or a big song.