Lucy Dacus Quotes

I've never stopped writing, never stopped recording.

I tend to write and record things quite quickly. You can tamper with things for years, and it's artistic laziness sometimes.

My main thing is just to keep writing. I've been doing some songwriting that's for my own record, I suppose.

If I don't stay creative and if I don't stay in the studio and keep writing and recording, I get kind of depressed. I can't quite remember what I'm supposed to be doing with myself.

I just like writing lyrics. I find a little satisfaction in performing live, making records. But primarily, I just try to write every day.

When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.'

When I'm recording, which is synonymous with writing, I'll play things over and over again until it sounds like I've got the right guitar part. Whereas I think, as the much younger player I tended to do things much more consciously. I didn't wait for the moment where inspiration might strike. That's what I do now. I wait for it to naturally start to replay itself in my mind. As I say, I don't force it. So I like to think of myself as a receiver. I'm a telephone line to who knows where, but until I hear it through that receiver, I don't usually do it. It's got to start writing itself somehow.

Writing by hand is a way of letting mystery into my writing. But I'm constantly trying to figure out how to do this job. It's a work in progress.

How lucky is the man who, like Mozart and others, goes to the tavern of an evening and writes some fresh music. For he lives while he is creating.

Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn’t show up invited, eventually she just shows up

Every writer, big or small, needs to say or write that the genius is always hissed at by his contemporaries. Naturally, this is not true, it happens only occasionally and often by chance. But this need within the writer is enlightening.

Writing is always a voyage of discovery.

Musicians always have music in their heads about their perceptions of the world.

It's easier to write songs when you're single.

Inspiration does not always precede the act of writing; it often follows it.

I listen to music all the time. I write while listening to music. And I tell myself that the music nourishes the art forms that I do master and domesticate, and have authority over.

I think the more that I can find myself getting out of the way - like you said yourself - trying to get out of thinking too much, and sometimes something truly special can happen. That's the beautiful mystery of song writing - that you really don't know where these songs come from exactly, and you don't know how you came up with them - and god bless it that you should have the gift of channeling that.

I write songs from the point of view I had at a time;I'm not tryingto write songs from a young person's point of view.That only ends in disaster.

How do you write? You write, man, you write, that's how, and you do it the way the old English walnut tree puts forth leaf and fruit every year by the thousands. . . . If you practice an art faithfully, it will make you wise, and most writers can use a little wising up.

I think one artist to another artist, the best compliment you can pay one another, because the part of you that is inspired or creates something, to write a joke or a song, that's like the God-like part of a person.

The key to being a wonderful writer is not to write. You just get out of the way. Leave room for God to walk in the room. And when I write something that I know is right, I get on my knees and say 'thank you.'

I don't really know why an idea comes to me. But all of a sudden, an idea comes and from experience I can intuit what something means when an interesting line pops up. Or I can intuit what an interesting choice might be. And I can try a couple of different choices, and see which one feels right, and then continue the song to see where it goes.

I'm trying to make something every time that feels new and surprises people. Hopefully at least one person. But it's not like I turn it off. I don't make a movie and then go back to my normal life. When I'm finishing one movie the next day I'm thinking about the next one.

When I get an idea for a song it would gel in my mind for weeks or months, and then one day just like that, Ill write it.

When I'm writing I don't dream much; it's like the dreaming gets used in the writing.