Music Writing Quotes

#1. Although we are being presented in Carnegie Hall, we have to furnish a budget for our guest stars, and for the music writing - which is a huge budget in any orchestra that plays popular music.

Skitch Henderson

#2. I went to school in Gainesville because it was a huge punk and folk town. So I went to class twice a week, and then I went to shows and wrote. I did a lot of music writing before I actually started playing music.

Benjamin Booker

#3. Writing more and more to the sound of music, writing more and more like music. Sitting in my studio tonight, playing record after record, writing, music a stimulant of the highest order, far more potent than wine.

Anais Nin

#4. The best user experiences are enchanting. They help the user enter an alternate reality, whether it's the world of making music, writing, sharing photos, coding, or managing a project.

Kathy Sierra

#5. Being on 'Nashville' and working with some incredible people like T-Bone Burnett and Buddy Miller - so many wonderful, incredible musicians that I've been blessed to play with and observe - that has continued to shape the process of arranging music, writing music.

Jonathan Jackson

#6. I like any and all of my associations with music -writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky.

Duke Ellington

#7. The cool thing about writing music, writing anything, is that once you publish it, it's there forever.

Ryan Tedder

#8. I began observing, making paintings of my surroundings, taking a vow of silence, listening, composing music, writing, and making time for formal education. Then I started telling stories.

John Francis

#9. People showed me this way of dealing with music, writing songs, thinking about music and shows and our community and the fact that it doesn't have to be about being popular or fashion or making money.

Chuck Ragan

#10. From the beginning of church history, music, writing, literature, and the greatest works of art all came from the church. To change the culture and make it a force for good, you have to be in it and be a part of it.

Patricia Heaton

#11. I started writing music when I was 15 in my bedroom, and I'd post them on MySpace, and from there it shifted to doing covers on YouTube and building my Twitter.

Tori Kelly

#12. I think music, like writing, can be a mirror. Can turn back onto the listener, the viewer, the reader, an experience that they know but they don't know.

Claudia Rankine

#13. My favorite way of working is if somebody gives me a piece of music, because I'm quite limited as a player, so it's my favorite thing if somebody gives me a piece of music, and then I can write lyrics and melodies.

Sinead O'Connor

#14. Bon Jovi is most definitely the key to how I am able to write so much in a day

C.S. Woolley

#15. Writing a song doesn't heal things. Even if the song comes up with a solution, it's still only a theory. Going out and living my lyrics is a whole other deal. That takes courage.

Alanis Morissette

#16. I've been writing a lot of country music again. I've written some bluegrass material. I'm having a good time doing that.

Dan Fogelberg

#17. Writing music on your own makes you think a lot about your life. Who are you? Would you change anything about yourself? This is where it comes from.

Enya

#18. I love making records; I love making music; I love writing songs.

Barry Gibb

#19. I can't write - out of all the things it takes to make music, lyrics are the thing I'm by far the shittiest at.

Jay Watson

#20. In Nashville, there is a historic tendency to work the lyric to death while settling for music that works. In pop or rock, it can be the other way around.

Michael Kosser

#21. When we started writing this kind of music in the beginning, I didn't think that many people would listen to it, but over the years our fan base just kept growing and growing. Now, it's like we do it for us and our fans.

Jeff Hanneman

#22. An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

Artie Shaw

#23. I used to split my time between writing, music and painting. I would work on a book and then abandon it, start a band, do an album, quit music, then do a gallery show. Eventually I decided to give writing a serious shot.

Isaac Marion

#24. I think it's hard to really write a song that will educate someone because songs are meant to be ... you don't want to be too didactic in a song because it doesn't make for good music. And I think the role of songs can be to inspire people but there needs to education and prose to back that up.

John Legend

#25. I'm a self-taught musician so how I read music is kind of very weak and I kind of read my own version of tablature, I write my own crappy reminders on what I'm playing.

Jason Mraz

#26. Music always stimulates my imagination. When I'm writing I usually have some Baroque music on low in the background chamber music by Bach, Telemann, and the like.

Haruki Murakami

#27. Writing catchy pop songs is a super-minor superpower, but it's mine.

J.C. Lillis

#28. When I write my music I see all the rivers flowing ... sensual, spiritual, religious, animal, intellectual ...

Laura Nyro

#29. I knew I wanted to be in music, but I didn't know my role, so I did everything from interning at Rolling Stone to writing heavy metal fanzines to playing in a high-school band, and I think all those things probably helped in a way.

Mark Ronson

#30. Me personally, I side more with punk rock bands. I grew up with The Misfits, The Dead Boys, The Damned, Dropkick Murphys, and early AFI. That was the stuff that really got me into music. Song writing wise, bands like Alkaline Trio were very important to me for beginning to write songs.

Andy Biersack

#31. Unlike motor sport, I didn't get into music for the live performances. I like writing and studio work and seeing how a song can come to life.

Jacques Villeneuve

#32. In my life, looking at other women who have been pregnant while writing, I always feel like it's kind of their most musical or the closest to themselves. I think for me it's such a validating moment, you know. I always knew I wanted to have kids, and I've been making music all my life.

Kelis

#33. I think I'm writing for an intelligent stranger - you know, in my mind I can't remember who coined that phrase first. I don't want to write anything that makes me cringe, first of all. I cringe a lot - mostly when I hear popular music.

Jason Isbell

#34. Music, for me, is completely self-indulgent. I write it, I play the instruments, I arrange it, I produce it. It's all about me - as it should be.

Lenny Kravitz

#35. I definitely write about a lot of dreamy, surreal stuff. I do end up going to a surreal world with my music, but I also like the idea of there being really real stuff as well.

Ellie Goulding

#36. Writing music is really personal, and it's a really exciting thing to participate in because represents the full creative process: It feels like something is coming from nothing.

Zooey Deschanel

#37. He starts to hum, a haunting melody. No words ride the music, only the familiar notes of a forgotten song.

A.G. Howard

#38. I'm weird - I don't really listen to American music while I'm writing. I do occasionally get an anthem song, but generally speaking, when I write, I only listen to Japanese and Hawaiian music.

Violet Duke

#39. If I'm going to continue to be any kind of spiritual teacher, I've got to go deeper myself. And so for me, [I am] preserving long periods of solitude, silence, prayer, journaling, study, writing. I don't turn on music or the TV unless I really need to.

Richard Rohr

#40. 'Hound Dog' took like twelve minutes. That's not a complicated piece of work. But the rhyme scheme was difficult. Also the metric structure of the music was not easy. 'Kansas City' was maybe eight minutes, if that. Writing the early blues was spontaneous. You can hear the energy in the work.

Jerry Leiber

#41. "Good" people are those who don't hold in the thoughts, but find proper outlets like writing, painting, music, etc.

Matthew Carter

#42. To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I'm writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence.

Quentin Tarantino

#43. Writing, acting, music, comedy. A deep love of literature and books. Thank God for all the artists who've helped me.

Bill Hicks

#44. I have my writing and acting and producing and directing, and my younger brother has his music and his acting.

Kevin Schmidt

#45. Write your own music and write frequently. Go to as many live shows as you can as well (of bands you enjoy of course). You can learn a lot watching other performers.

Dia Frampton

#46. I keep a guitar around while writing and will improvise music. I do this for several reasons, such as that it's fun, and sometimes it helps me with the meter.

Jack Prelutsky

#47. When a good poet is confronted with difficult facts that he knows to be true but also are inimical to poetry, he has no choice but to flee to the margins; it was ... this very retreat that allowed him to hear the hidden music that is the source of all art.

Orhan Pamuk

#48. So how do you do it, with just words and just music, capture the feeling that my Earth is somebody's ceiling?

Sara Bareilles

#49. I've been asked which of the other arts novel-writing is most like, and I have come to believe it is acting. Of course, in terms of pattern it can be like music, in terms of structure it can be like painting, but the job to me is most like acting.

Andrew O'Hagan

#50. In the music industry, we value large success. I realized that while I would like that, that it's not what my writing is about. And if I start making it about that, it becomes impure.

David Friedman

#51. Music is a language - and language, at its finest, should be music.

T.L. Rese

#52. If you're writing a piece for the Boston Pops, the balance is towards one end. If you're writing a piece for a chamber music society, then it's towards another point. I won't make a final answer on that. I think it changes with every piece.

Peter Maxwell Davies

#53. Every time you go in, it's like starting over. You don't know how you did the other records. You're learning all over. It's some weird musician amnesia, or maybe the road wipes it out.

Beck

#54. When I write lyrics, it's only when I'm angry or hurt or sad. So lyrically it's never really easy going. And the music is always really intense.

Henry Rollins

#55. Choice betrays character," I said.
"That's not true." Loring moved his finger along the
sheet as if writing his name in cursive. "Eliza, you can't judge a man solely on his actions. Sometimes actions are nothing more than reactions.

Tiffanie DeBartolo

#56. And of course, in my writing, there is the constant theme of music, love of, preoccupation with, music. Music is the single thread making my life into a coherency.

Philip K. Dick

#57. I just had to find something else to fulfill me. Always being a singer and writing, it was a blessing. My brother started making music that was the kind of music I always saw myself singing.

Taryn Manning

#58. You get a lot of who you are as a musician across through the music you write. If you're writing your own music, then it's important to be really honest.

Harry Styles

#59. When I'm not writing music, I'm playing guitar, or reading philosophy. So all I have left is just an hour or two for Claudia Schiffer.

Richard Pinhas

#60. Whenever I started writing music, it just naturally led itself there. As I started to tell my story, it's where my home was. It's just a very natural choice.

Jamie Lynn Spears

#61. Todd and Tim [Tobias] write the music, and I come up with the melodies and lyrics. I call it the Ohio Rock Factory. Tim and Todd run the northern plant in Cleveland, and I've got the southern plant down here in Dayton. No tours permitted.

Robert Pollard

#62. When I was 4 years old my mother put me into an early music education school. That's where they taught you perfect pitch and harmony and how to write music and all that. At that time, one of the homeworks was to listen to all the sounds and the noise of a day and transfer that into musical notes.

Yoko Ono

#63. Thank God For Writing, As Now I Can Work Until My Last Breath!

Latif Mercado

#64. A lot of music for me was about - I mean aside from the fun and challenge of writing and being really good friends with my bandmates - getting to perform.

Carrie Brownstein

#65. I didn't know that there were many rules in music when I first started writing.

Tyler Joseph

#66. I make writing as much a part of my life as I do eating or listening to music.

Maya Angelou

#67. I look at composers and conductors, anybody involved in music or writing or art in general; they got more done as they got older. If I can, I'll be one of those people because what I do is my passion.

Sarah Brightman

#68. I write a lot of stuff, and some of it I don't even present to Judas Priest. But having said that, my first love is to play Judas Priest music.

Glenn Tipton

#69. Probably having fallen in love with music and movies at a young age and then first learning about writing by kind of following the path of writers like Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs and being a rock journalist.

Cameron Crowe

#70. When you get the right people together, writing music becomes very effortless.

Peter Hook

#71. When I use weed creatively, I'm much better at drawing or making something or playing music. But what I do for a living is mostly performing as an actor or writing, and for those things I need to have my faculties sharp.

Nick Offerman

#72. Writing music is my therapy. It's very purifying!

Amy Lee

#73. I'm trying to get every man involved in art, into experimental music, or painting, or novel-writing.

Harvey Pekar

#74. I am always thinking about writing music; my wife is constantly asking me: 'Is there any way you can turn off the music part of your brain for a minute?' but I really can't! It's my form of therapy.

Kellin Quinn

#75. I have so many songs, it's ridiculous. I love so many different types of music and tend to write all over the map, style-wise. R&B, rock 'n' roll, screamers, pop, good-time songs.

Taryn Manning

#76. Man is driven to create; I know I really love to create things. And while I'm not good at painting, drawing, or music, I can write software.

Yukihiro Matsumoto

#77. Poetry is composing, you are writing words to move the world like music.

Atticus

#78. I'd always thought that if I could get sober and stay sober, I would be able to have a career making music. My drug and alcohol addiction was the one thing holding me back. I had finally gotten the tools to stay sober, and it was just a matter of writing the songs.

Macklemore

#79. I started playing piano when I was 6. And I knew that wanted to be involved in that form of expression, whether it was through music, or acting, or dancing, or painting, or writing.

Alanis Morissette

#80. I want to write some books. Books that have nothing to do with music, just some fiction type of books for a whole different audience of people.

Jhene Aiko

#81. I compose my own stuff. I've been writing songs with words. I've been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer.

Alicia Witt

#82. I listen to a lot of different stuff, from Mozart to Johnny Dowd to Monster Magnet. I don't listen to music while I'm writing a draft, but I do listen to it when I'm revising.

Donald Ray Pollock

#83. I can't listen to music while writing - any such distraction would have dreadful consequences.

Lincoln Child

#84. When I started writing full time I had not long stopped being a teacher and when at last I had a full day to write, I would put music on and wonder to myself - am I allowed to do this? Then I thought: 'I am control of this and no one is telling me what I can do.'

Roddy Doyle

#85. Now, one can often get away with playing music by ear when it is not being recorded, but writing is another matter; its mistakes are not forgotten because they are still there to confuse us.

Albert Murray

#86. I write songs very quickly, so the 20 minutes of joy I get out of writing a song doesn't compare to the two months of joy I get engaging with the people who like my music.

Halsey

#87. I'm a really visual artist, and I love writing treatments for music videos, photo shoots, fashion, and all the visual parts that go along with making an album.

Bonnie McKee

#88. Sometimes I'll write a song. When I've gone through something really hard in my life, sometimes it's other people's music. Other times it's actually writing the songs and getting out of mind and into the song.

Jack Johnson

#89. I want story, wit, music, wryness, color, and a sense of reality in what I read, and I try to get it in what I write.

John D. MacDonald

#90. It was Rick's Rubin idea to have the 'Brooklyn' verse repeat. It already was a story, but having that made it a folk song. Instead of this rambling march of verses, Rick understands that music needs hooks. You need that repeated chorus, that everyone can sing along to.

Scott Avett

#91. I wasn't interested in writing music that wasn't beautiful for me to listen to.

Joanna Newsom

#92. I personally feel the need to experience life and new music and ideas before I can sit down and start writing music again.

DJ Shadow

#93. Saying directors don't write because they don't type is very wrong, it's like saying Dylan doesn't write music because he doesn't write notation.

William Monahan

#94. Our sense of what American English is has upended our relationship to articulateness, our approach to writing, and how (and whether) we impart it to the young, our interest in poetry, and our conception of what it is, and even our response to music and how we judge it.

John McWhorter

#95. I've been writing and making my own music for a long time.

Patti Scialfa

#96. We played more rock music when we were writing the script. 'Renegade'. All of the Styx songs. All of the old '70's and '80's music, that's the stuff that's pounding in the background while we were doing this stuff. It's a part of those movies.

Todd Farmer

#97. I like and I love everything that has to do with cinema: writing, directing, editing, creating music, and even acting.

Werner Herzog

#98. When I started writing music on the guitar, it started off very folky because of my limited ability to play. It was slow, soft melodies. But then, as I got better on the guitar, I started exploring different sounds.

Kiesza

#99. I always use familiarity in my music, whether it's in my song writing or whatever.

SonReal

#100. I think if you write music for soundtracks then sometimes you do something that you could never do if the film did not exist.

Claudio Simonetti