Songwriting Career Quotes

I always wanted to be an artist; being a songwriter for myself was always a must but being a songwriter for others has been a bonus.

Songwriting was always my 'plan B'. I didn't even know that songwriting was a job until my late teens!

At 18, I got a publishing deal, so I was like, 'I can do this for real and not go to college.' When I was a teenager, my parents dragged me to a lot of songwriting conventions.

I really want people to know I'm a songwriter.

Songwriters, you have to work - you have to wait for residuals. You have to pray that the song's going to be a hit. And then a year later, you might get a check.

If it hadn't been for Johnny Cash, I'd probably have been a Nashville songwriter because that's what I had done for almost five years.

Throughout my career as a songwriter, I've had a knack for writing songs that were about me and my life experiences and observations.

I really love being an artist, but I make my money from songwriting.

I'm a songwriter first...In my career I have never felt that my being a woman was an obstacle or an advantage. I guess I've been oblivious...Sensitive, humbug. Everybody thinks I'm sensitive...There is a downside to having one of the biggest-selling albums ever.

I am a songwriter at heart, and I feel like I would, in the future, write songs for other people. I don't think I want to pursue it for myself, for a solo career.

All the time I was writing hit songs with my partner David Porter, I always had the yen to perform. Sure did. And when the opportunity came, I took it. The first album, 'Presenting Isaac Hayes,' didn't do so hot, but it was like a prelude for what was to come.

My first significant break was when I was 15, going on 16, and my cousin Courtney 'Bear' Sills told me you can make a career out of writing songs. He was the one who put me in with 112. The first song I did with 112 was 'We Can Do It Anywhere.'

A lot of people, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry and a lot of people have written for other people, and of course Bruno Mars. So I think it's a great way to break into the industry and show people what you can do and show them your talent and people tend to listen a little differently to your own music as an artist, when you've proven yourself as a good songwriter for other artists.

It's hard not to go back and look at my songwriting catalog and go, 'Look, there are 600 to 700 songs here.'

I didn't know they would pay you money to sit in a room and write songs for other people. I always thought that George Strait was singing a song, he made it up, and that was the end of it. But the instant I found that out, that that could be a job, I thought, 'That's the job for me. I gotta figure out how to do that.'

I sing and play guitar, but songwriting is how I pay my rent. And so I didn't really need a lot of publicity to get people to record the songs.

I write music as a staff writer for Universal Music Group, and I have since 2007. I've never talked about it publicly because I wanted to earn the right to be in the same room as the great writers I write with and not shoot my mouth off because I'm an actor. It's really important to me, and I really care about it.

I moved to Nashville to be a songwriter. I found out that was a job, that someone would pay you to sit in a room with a guitar and make up songs! It is the greatest job in the world. I wrote three or four songs a day. That's what I lived for.

I always wanted to be a songwriter, and it took a while.

When I left college, it broke my mom's heart, but I knew I had to be in Nashville. I knew that was the place you had to be in to become a better songwriter, and that's what I wanted to move there for and to ultimately get a record deal.

If I had to drop everything and just be a songwriter, I would be OK with that because that's the real joy.

L.A.'s cool; I had a run with it to where it just pretty much wore me out. I love the weather and I have great friends there, great family, but I really cannot take a lot of the culture. Like Nashville, where everybody's a songwriter, everybody out there is an actor.

I didn't even know the industry of songwriting existed. I thought everybody sang songs and they were only singing the songs that they wrote. So after I found out about songwriting in college, I was like, "Okay, I want to do that."

Nobody in my family was musical. I had no idea you could be a songwriter and make a living at it. It was all discovery. It was all just thrown at me.

I'd hate to be a songwriter starting a career today.