Joni Mitchell Quotes

I'm a composer, and therefore I know when I've written a good tune. When you've written a good song is when you know that the lyric is completely coalesced with the song.

It took me a long time to learn how to write a good song.

That's what I find with any good song, you just have to let it happen. Out of about twenty songs you might write, one of any significance. It might be thirty or forty, but I just keep churning them out and churning them out in hope that one of them will stick.

I feel like 'Beware' is a heartfelt song - it's something that is definitely a story, something that I cultivated from personal stories, some from just other stories in just wanting to make a good song.

To write a good song, an artist has to drawn from reality. There has to be some spark from realism that communicates a real feeling to someone else. You have to be real. Or you have to be a really good storyteller.

It must have been when I was 14 or 15 that I started tentatively writing songs and was able to convey an emotion and a lyric with what I wanted to say.

I like collaboration because, first of all, I'm good at writing lyrics. I don't know how to make beats. I don't play instruments. I'm not a good singer. So even when you see a solo album of mine, it's still a collaboration.

I've always said that music is like literature.

Right from day one, you know when you've written a good song.

All my songs come from me because I only seem able to write about myself and my experiences.

I've tried every which way for writing lyrics - everything from using really bizarre imagery and metaphors, sort of obscuring the facts of what I'm singing about, all the way over to a song like 'Losing My Mind,' where you're just reading my thoughts as they're occurring.

I always prefer to write songs about emotional situations and heartbreak because I like getting into the character.

I am very into lyrics. I start with what the words are saying, what the storyline is saying, like a good script. It should really capture me, do something for me. If I don't get it, it's not going to move people, and if it's not going to move people, it's not going to happen.

I walk away from writing what I consider to be a good song - with a good character, a good story in it - with all I'm gonna really get out of that song. My greatest pleasure is to create it, not to record it, not to hear anyone else play it, though that can be nice too.

All of my records have been very personal, just writing more and more songs, you get better at being able to say what you feel.

One thing I'm super aware of in my music when I'm writing is: 'Am I overcomplicating this?' I'll write a song about some deep existential quandary and explore all these dumb thought waves, and then think 'Is it effective to say that? Or is it effective to say one simple thing that communicates the feeling better?'

If I'm kind of sad or depressed, it doesn't necessarily help me to write a song about exactly what I'm depressed about.

When I talk about what I'm feeling, I can get outside of it and analyze it. I think that process, especially on 'Sprained Ankle,' happened after it was recorded. All of those songs are just documentations of how I felt at that time. I was writing them because I needed to.

I don't like the word "happy." I wouldn't want to use it that context. I enjoy writing songs, it's a really good challenge, it tickles me. It's a wonderful way to engage with your surroundings, through poetry and songs.

When I'm writing, I try to think about what would make a song better before worrying about personal opinions.

It doesn't necessarily take four years to write a good piece of music. It might take four hours. It just depends on when your inspiration comes.

We have this song called 'Radio,' and I wrote that song when we needed one more song for a record. So I went back into the other room and wrote it in 20 minutes.

The-Dream was like my diary. I would sit there and talk his ear off about all my guy situations; he would just turn my stories into songs.

Occasionally there is a moment in a person's life when he takes a great stride forward in wisdom, humility, or disillusionment. For a split second he comes into a kind of cosmic understanding. For a trembling breath of time he knows all there is to know. He is loaned the gift the poet yearned for - seeing himself as others see him.

I'm not done writing songs about you yet.