Stanley Clarke Quotes

I always go in very emotionally when I'm doing music. Sad or happy, I'm always into it. I have a hard time writing for other people, writing with someone else in mind.

It's not just music. To me, it's songwriting more than anything. A lot of people say it's expression, but to me, it's more than that.

I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.

I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.

I cannot live or write without music. It stimulates the normally dormant parts of my brain that come in handy when constructing fiction.

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.

I just finished a novel, and I'm back kind of noodling on the screenplays. Screenplays are tough. I am making music, I'm just not sure what kind of music it is or where it's going.

I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.

We start a lot with melodies and instrumentation and trying to figure out good melodies for verses and choruses. We get to lyrics sometimes second, so we'll start humming a melody, finding something, and see where the music takes you as far as lyrics are and what you want to say and go from there.

Drawing and visual pursuits were first. Music came and found me in a way. Really, what it's about is creative problem solving, and music is a lot more an expression of that than painting is for me.

I usually write my music on a piano, and I really enjoy performing that way, because that actually shows how the music was in my mind before it actually became an electronic song.

I write a lot of rhymes, but I don't really end up using them a lot of times, and I end up just freestyling. I like to write music, though, more than I like to freestyle, to be honest.

It's a big plethora of music floating around in my head all the time, and I'll sit there and write a song.

I love all types of music. Jazz, classical, blues, rock, hip-hop. I often write scripts to instrumentals like a hip-hop artist. Music inspires me to write. It's either music playing or completely silent. Sometimes distant sound fuels you. In New York there's always a buzzing beneath you.

It's about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness - sonic goodies.

I just happened to start playing music for the conceptual ideas.

I don't write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.

Other people notice the same things but they don't think to put it to music.

When we make records, it's hard to pinpoint one thing that inspires a record. It's usually a number of different things that lead to inspiration or wanting to write something down and share it with someone.

Usually when I write a song, I'll write the music and then kind of fit some words to it.

I've always used music for my acting, and I do have a kind of a very personal play list that I create.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

My music must reflect whatever's going on in my mind, and my life needs to evolve for me to discover who it is I'm becoming.

My books are personal: I'm not saying they're the Bible of music.

I always start with the music and then try to figure out what I want to write about lyrically.