R. Kelly Quotes

Bob Dylan has a way with words that simply blows me away. When he forgets his lyrics he just makes up new ones on the spot, that is what I called talented!

Being a songwriter is really the base of being an artist, for me.

In songwriting, I needed language. And I always believed in singing about what I do.

Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.

Talent is like a faucet, while it is open, one must write.

Some of the best songs I've written, I've written in 10 minutes.

When people think of someone being prolific, it's like, 'He's got a vault with 5,000 songs in it,' or something, but I just kind of pick them out of the air when they float by.

And he was going to give me a song, because I'm a singer and I wanted to sing in everything.

I wake up in the morning and I say 'Ahh! Today's the day for a song! I'm going to write a song today!' And I do. I write a song.

Making music and writing kind of come from the same creative place.

I could write a dozen different songs with the same three or four chords, but they'd all be entirely different.

Songwriting has always been close to me.

I've always idolized people who can write songs.

I used to do three or four songs a day, just write them - boom, boom, boom, and done - because of how spontaneous I was.

Sing your heart out and write the best song you possible can.

Songwriting has become such a big part of what I do that emotions and the melodies that accompany them blur into one.

I just make up lyrics off the top of my head. A lot of times, there's a phrase I really like, and I kind of build the song around that.

If you can make a little painting for the ears with a few words, well, I like words; I like cutting them up and finding different ways of saying the same thing... I get into a spell, and it all comes easy. I don't labor over it. I go inside the song, I think you make yourself an antenna for songs, and songs want to be around you. And then they bring other songs along, and then they're all sitting around, and they're drinkin' your beer, and they're sleeping on the floor. And they are using the phone, they're rude, thankless little f---ers.

Some people, it [songwriting] comes faster. Some people, it comes slower.

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.

What happens is, especially when I was writing for my band, Creedence, and it's the way I write now, I go into "guitar lick" mode. When I do, it sort of leads into a real song. I'd say to myself, your songwriting is coming up with a guitar lick, and the rest is easy!

I think my favorite thing is songwriting.

Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn't have anything to do with me, but it's just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears.

You never know what's going to play into what's worthy of getting encapsulated into a song.

Martin Freeman is a genius, he really is. He gives you every color of the rainbow in every take and it's wonderful just to play off of him and opposite him.