Walter Becker Quotes

I aspire to write what are called 'familiar essays.' They begin in the personal and end in the universal. It's not for me to say if I have been successful at it. But that is the hope.

I like the purity of telling stories now because not a lot of people are telling stories in their music. I wanna tell my specific story: what I see right now.

I don't know, I've always written songs that are mainly about attitude, not me personally.

A lyric has to mean something to me, something that has happened to me.

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

What I write is very personal, but not autobiographical. It's more 'thematically personal' - what's up in my life in terms of themes at the moment.

My lyrics are my diary - you're hearing every detail of my life.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

The first set of lyrics for the first songs I ever wrote, which are the ones on 'Pretty Hate Machine,' came from private journal entries that I realized I was writing in lyric form.

I can only speak for myself and my own music, because that is what I am most familiar with, and I write about things that I am living or experiencing.

I never sit down to write anything personal unless I know the subject is going to go beyond my own experience and address something larger and more universal.

Anyone who wants to know who I am can just read my lyrics - I've always written about who I am.

I'm not afraid to use my personal experiences and put them into a song. I think that's when you get the best stuff anyway, when it's real emotion.

I essentially write for myself.

You know, there's always someone in mind when I'm writing. You know, it's all comes from somewhere inside.

Not that there is anything wrong with confessional songwriting, there are plenty of people that do that I admire. I think it is great, it just isn't how I do things.

You don't have to always write about big stuff. Writing is about expressing yourself, you know? It can be about small stuff, too.

In 'Out of the Dark,' I'm talking about my own life. I'm not talking as a character or speaking as a character. I was not as free as when I write fiction.

I'm a very message-oriented artist, and each song has a totally different meaning.

I have kept a diary as long as I can remember, and drawings are really another kind of diary.

It's a really personal thing for me to write a song.

For a while, I felt a little self-impelled to write Lou Reed Kind of songs. I should have understood that a Lou Reed song was anything I wanted to write about.

The songs are about things that we were thinking and we wrote 'em down, and when you listen to 'em, whatever you think it's about... THAT'S what it's about!

You know, I've sung a lot of emotional songs in my life, but when you're writing it yourself, it's very difficult to decide what to reveal.

I always like to write where I'm at in real life into whatever I'm working on.