Mose Allison Quotes

It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born.

Writing every song is a little journey. The first note has to lift you.

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.

A lot of times, I don't feel responsible for the songs myself. But that's my job or my place in life: to keep my search and catch the ideas before they pass me by.

When I'm writing [songs], some days the pen just goes. I'm not in charge and I'm almost listening outside of it. That's when I realize that we all have to start looking at life as a gift. It's like listening to a color and believing that these colors have soul mates and once you get them all together the painting is complete.

With writing music and writing songs and recording music and coming up with stuff, you need to kind of reengage that kind of inner child to come up with interesting perceptions.

I've been writing a lot of songs in twos, songs that are like twins in my mind.

I think that, when you're writing your songs, there's always a debate about whether, is that you in the song? Is it not you in the song?

I don't write songs, songs write me.

If I write songs and I think they sound good, then that's it. That's what I do. I'm not a technical musician, which is fine for rock and roll.

It varies, I don't think there is any one set way of writing songs or coming up with ideas, it comes in so many ways you know.

As for me, I rarely write a song. But when I do write a song, like "Ain't No Chimneys in the Projects," which came to me at three a.m. one morning, on a whim - I get a percentage.

There's nothing like the eureka moment of knocking off a song that didn't exist before - I won't compare it to sex, but it lasts longer.

Writing a song is like - you're writing a song all the time. It's just when it pops out. It's been there all the time. It's not something that suddenly you do it. It's always there. Suddenly, it's in the right mixture inside you to come out. Usually when you're writing on the piano or a guitar, you don't write in lyrics, on their own. To me it's very boring.

I think the way I write is kind of naturally rhythmic. If there's anything of my own in my writing, I think that's my own thing. Like when I start a song, I almost hear the rhythm more than the melody.

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

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

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

Every time you write a song, you're looking for some sort of perfection, and you never quite reach it. You're always looking for that extra missing piece.

Every song you write you think is the last one you're going to manage. You put everything you've got into the song, and you've twisted it and pulled at it and dug in and found a way to complete it. To get another one is the trick.

Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.

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

You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies.

Some songs just fall out of you. And some you have to wrestle out like an abscess.

There was never an 'a-ha' moment when a spider bit me and I knew I could write songs. For that reason, I don't know if I'm always going to be able to. I want to write songs forever, but it's an elusive thing.