Mark Foster Quotes

There's this element of surprise when you're writing songs, like it's something outside of you that you get to be part of. And it's just exciting. And that's why I keep writing - because I like that feeling.

I have so much music inside me I'm just trying to stay afloat. I don't tend to write for a particular band - you have to just write the songs and then let God into the room and let the music tell you what to do.

When I write songs, I write from a lot of perspectives.

I usually know the general emotion of a song, or the general feeling of it, and then I think I just get so excited by the act of recording. I love that process so much that I feel like if I knew exactly what I wanted I'd arrive at something too soon.

Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It's not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it's just like turning on the faucet. That's just the nature of it.

I found songwriting really hard at first, but after a while it was actually very easy.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

We all love to sing, and when we sit down to write a song I think it kind of shows itself to us.

When we start to write for a new record, we never really know what we're doing. We don't come into the room with a set of ideas, but miraculously, a song comes out of it.

'Write' is almost the wrong verb for what I do. I think 'compose' is more accurate because you're trying to make the sounds in your mind and in your voice. So I compose while I'm driving or in the shower.

When you're in the middle of writing a song, you can come up with this whole web of stuff only you know how to get through. That's very entertaining for me to do that.

You know, as you compose music, you're just off in your own world. You have no idea where reality is, so to have an idea of what people think is pretty hard.

Even when I don't think I'm writing, I'm writing. There's some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it's collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that's when they come out.

It's true when they say songwriting is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. In truth, what happens is... songs comes through you.

I usually sit around with the guitar in reach and grab it when I get an idea. Sometimes it lasts five minutes, and sometimes it lasts all day.

I write while I'm walking, on little scraps of paper. If I have a melody going, I can feel it for days.

There's always a special feeling I have while writing any song.

The songs come along at their own pace when they are ready.

I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind of way. And then as a few more lines get added and a piece gets added, eventually the song pretty much takes over and you can't really find a way to change those things.

I don't get my inspiration from a specific source. It's more like if you listen to a good tune, it gives me inspiration to write a better tune.

Sometimes when I write songs, I don't know what they're about, and it just suddenly comes to me.

The songs sort of come out spontaneously and it'll take me awhile to figure out what exactly is happening lyrically, what kind of story I'm telling. Then I start building little bridges - word bridges - to make everything go from one point to the next point to the next point until it reaches the end.

Sometimes when I write lyrics there are images in them, usually on a quite simplistic level, like colors. But most often music comes first and then later I sit down with visual people and we chat about what we want to do. I don't look at myself as a visual artist. I make music.

The recollection of how, when and where it all happened became vague as the lingering strains hung in the rafters of the studio. I wanted to shout back at it, Maybe I didn't write you, but I found you.

Usually, the music inspires the lyrics. The lyrics just sort of fall off like a bunch of crumbs from the melody. That's all I want them to be - crumbs. I don't want to work any kind of fabricated message.