M. Shadows Quotes

I'm the guy that gets up at three in the morning to jot down an entire sheet of lyrics for something that won't be recorded for six months. You have to get it down when you can, because thoughts are fluid.

I try and make little stories. Whether it's with a pencil or with bits of records, it's really the same thing.

I'm always writing; my phone is full of ideas - melodies and lyrics and stuff.

I was never a 'sit down with a notepad and write lyrics' kind of person.

Music is an important part of my writing process.

My most successful books, the ones that I feel the strongest about, are the ones that started with a premise that for me was deeply emotional.

I'll write lines or words in a notepad. You work on little things and little parts; sometimes they turn into bigger songs.

We have so much inspiration. It's everywhere... So I always have a pen with me and a laptop, and I write everything down.

Well, I always write when I am inspired, and I am not a constant song-writer.

The most difficult thing for me as an artist, as a creator of music, is lyrics. But everything else, I just do it.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

I've been singing since I was two. Music was my first passion and I love writing, singing, creating and being creative.

I think that once you start writing songs, you start developing a library of ideas that you can go and take from, so it gets easier as you go.

Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.

I've never had a writer's block, but still I think: 'Is it going to happen this time?' You never know what you're going to get; you just put your fingers on the keys and hope.

Blank paper has always inspired me.

At times, I will get in the studio and force myself to just write an entire front-to-back record, and 'Let Me Go' is one of these.

For me, how I feel about what I wrote down turns into a song.

There are rhythmic ideas which sometimes only work up to a point. In writing there are moments when it just comes off the page, it's not just a collection of notes.

There aren't a lot of 'Aha!' moments in writing.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

I write when I have to; I write when the song is done and I deal with the idea and I just go with it and I'll become what that song is all about until I have finished it. And when you do that, it makes the song more visual, it makes it more personal.

It's pretty amazing to write under any circumstances when someone gives you an assignment to write a song, even if it doesn't get accepted. I've written songs a couple of times, some for Disney, that haven't actually ended up in their films, but then you're left with a song forever.

I sit down and draw from my lyric book. I sit down and start looking through it and see if there is anything that strikes me that I've written.

I just sit down and the page just comes out and I look at it and the elements that appear on that page have a lot to do with what's going on in my life.