William Saroyan Quotes

I try not to say exactly what songs are about sometimes, because I feel like it ruins it for people.

Along with a lot of other things, becoming a Bob Dylan fan made me a writer. I was never interested in figuring out what the songs meant. I was interested in figuring out my response to them, and other people's responses. I wanted to get closer to the music than I could by listening to it - I wanted to get inside of it, behind it, and writing about it through it, inside of it, behind it, was my way of doing that.

There are more similarities than differences when it comes to preparation of a performance. You're using some lyrics, you have a relationship with them, they apply to different parts of your life and different circumstances, different memories, different stories you have in your head. You form personal relationships with the song. I think that's very similar, in a way, to prepping a character. You pour your own personality, in a sense, into the character, you sympathize with a character in a way that's similar to the way you might sympathize with a song.

Everybody has a different idea of love. One girl I know said, "I knew he loved me when de didn't come in my mouth.

I'd always wanted to write a song about a leather jacket and how wearing it makes you feel. I love leather jackets, and I've got a big collection of them.

And why should he interest himself at all in my moral and intellectual capacities: what is it to him what I think and feel?' I asked myself. And my heart throbbed in answer to the question.

It doesn't matter what kind of music you like or what kind of person you are or what you're used to listening to, or whether you know me or not. It doesn't matter, either way you can be inspired by it [my songs]. Each way I want to make it relatable to that group, but most of all keep the inspirational part of it, for sure."

If I sing "you broke my heart, you left me flat," everyone knows exactly what that means - they know the story. But if I sing a line that's plaintive or wailing, people can experience their own set of emotions and their own story. Each of us might give that phrase a different meaning. It's open to interpretation, and one song becomes a thousand songs. I love that.

I hate not understanding the words, because it kind of squashes the song. It shrinks the visual landscape that you've made for the sounds. And, all of a sudden, the content eclipses things.

For me a film is at its best when you can start filling in the story with your own life experience.

I won't forget those kind of things, but I just want to write them down and look at them. It's almost like when things like music come out and you're listening to a song and you have experiences with art or phenomena that supersede your simple relationship with them as just a piece of art. They're more than that. That's just what those quote are for me. They're big, they're important.

I long ago learned that you can't expect people to interpret the songs in the way they had meant for you, as the writer.

I stopped reading music reviews because it's somebody having a knee-jerk reaction to a song. I realized that that's not the definitive interpretation. It won't last long. It's a fleeting thing. What matters are people's relationships with these things over time and sometimes songs just take a really long time to reveal their true identity.

It was like those songs I'd heard as a child, each so familiar, and all mine. When i got older and realized the words were sad, the stories tragic, it didn't make me love them any less. By then they were already part of me, woven into my conciousness & memory

Other people singing my songs is something that I've never been casual about. I've always been very touched by it and I always go into immediate critical suspension.

I've definitely read interviews with people where they've explained exactly what they wrote something about and I've been like: "Oh no, I was thinking that was a really beautiful love song or a really sad thing."

I think it's important to be able to write stuff that's personal to you and stuff that you'll really be able to understand what you're singing about and be able to truly sing it. Because if you're singing a song that someone's written for you and you really can't relate to it, it's hard to sing that song.

I still perform because it's a necessity for my innards. And those songs, some of those songs, I have sung, I don't know how many thousands of times. And I promise you, every single solitary night, they're new to me. They are brand-new to me that night.

Only to the rude ear of one who is quite indifferent does the song of a bird seem always the same.

There are always meaningful songs for somebody. People are doing their courting, people are finding their wives, people are making babies, people are washing their dishes, people are getting through the day, with songs that we may find insignificant. But their significance is affirmed by others. There’s always someone affirming the significance of a song by taking a woman into his arms or by getting through the night. That’s what dignifies the song. Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.

I really wanted to get that dynamic on the record onto people and let them know it wasn't just a simple strumming along the guitar type of thing without ramming it down their throats so I kind of went the opposite way and sang some of the songs more quietly which allowed for the louder parts to sound as though there were more. It was the only way singing those songs made sense to me.

Certain songs have a life, and certain songs don't. A song is like a saddle: you ride it for a while, and if it's the right kind of song you can sing it for the rest of your life. And then other songs are only really important for certain periods of your life, and you move on from them and find yourself not necessarily needing to sing them anymore.

If I just gave you a piece of paper with the lyrics written down on it, it would mean something to you. It would tell you a story.

A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist's mind to the viewer's. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist's mind.

I don't want to tell what the songs are about for me, because then people can't decide for themselves, which is why I write; it's for you to find your own meaning in. For me it's my story, for someone else it's theirs; if I tell exactly what it means, then it's only my story.