Top 100 Quotes About James Taylor
#1. When I was 17 I got a guitar for my birthday and started discovering Bob Dylan and James Taylor and the whole '60s thing, and that made me want to make songs, to go beyond just playing an instrument. I needed to write I guess.
Jason Reeves
#2. I was signed to A&M, I was signed to Lou Adler, who had a company within a company, which was A&M Records, and everything - James Taylor, Rita Coolidge, Carole King - I worked on all of that stuff.
Merry Clayton
#3. Liz [Gillies] doesn't really listen to anything new, besides Adele, Ariana Grande, and stuff like that. She loves '70s music and old '60s songs. She loves songwriters from the '70s that I hate, like Jim Croce and James Taylor, and she loves Stevie Nicks and old jazz classics.
Denis Leary
#4. My dad listened to a lot of James Taylor when I was growing up. We had a couple of his cassettes in the car, and we'd go on a lot of long family car trips. It was either strange musicals or James Taylor - or Whitney Houston. It was quite the combination there.
Jessie Mueller
#5. Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.
Amy Winehouse
#6. There is a 'patrician arrogance' to James Taylor that accounts in part for his popularity while it at the same time explains the critical resistance to his work.
Jon Landau
#7. My favorite time in music is probably 1970-75. Still Bill by Bill Withers, Harvest by Neil Young, John Prine's first album, James Taylor's One Man Dog-I hope I can bring the same sort of spirit I hear on those records.
Amos Lee
#8. I really love all types of music. I'm really open to that. I really love Bruno Mars, Justin Timberlake and some James Taylor and Elton John stuff.
Hailee Steinfeld
#9. I can't think of any punk who's put on an acoustic and hasn't just tried to sound like James Taylor.
Buzz Osborne
#10. In the early 60s, folk music seemed to be very popular. In the early 70s, people like James Taylor, John Denver, Jim Croce and Cat Stevens brought back the interest in acoustic music. Today, we don't hear anything.
Paul Stookey
#11. Probably my favorite artists to listen to James Taylor, Stevie Wonder - I haven't gone back in a really long time and really listened to them - my first guitar influences. It's been awhile since I revisited that.
Jonny Lang
#12. You want sympathy, go fuck James Taylor.
Joe Hill
#13. They can also be as manipulative as a James Taylor song. Sure, they're calming and bring you to a good place-but at their core, the whole goal of the damn thing is to undo you.
Brad Meltzer
#14. I started writing when I was 17. I got an acoustic guitar for my birthday after I discovered Bob Dylan and James Taylor.
Jason Reeves
#15. James Taylor and God are the reasons I play music.
Garth Brooks
#16. I could do James Taylor, Neil Young, and sound just like them.
Robin Zander
#17. Or like in the early 70's when we had the reaction against acid rock and all the fuzz tone, and feedback, and the noise. And you had James Taylor and everyone went acoustic and that.
Lester Bangs
#18. James Taylor may be an all-American boy but he isn't Horatio Alger, and the lionizing of many rock stars by the rock press has as much to do with old fashioned rags-to-riches stories as does the straight culture's deification of its idols.
Jon Landau
#19. James Taylor is the kind of person I always thought the word 'folksinger' referred to. He writes and sings songs that are reflections of his own life, and performs in them in his own style. All of his performances are marked by an eloquent simplicity.
Jon Landau
#20. I write heavily under the influence of James Taylor.
Carole King
#21. If somebody says 'singer-songwriter' to me, the first person I think of is James Taylor. There are plenty of modern singer-songwriters, but there is something about James Taylor that has always resonated with me.
Zachary Levi
#22. My dad is a huge folk music fan, so growing up, there were always records playing in my house. Carole King, James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles - I grew up with this music, and I was aware of how special this music was to a lot of people.
Jake Epstein
#23. I love James Taylor, Jeff Buckley, Elliott Smith and Nine Inch Nails.
Nat Wolff
#24. When my dad played me 'Walking Man,' I heard those chord changes and that melody, it completely blew me away. Maybe you wouldn't really hear the James Taylor influences in my music, but they're definitely buried in there.
Charlie Puth
#25. I am at my core a singer/songwriter a la James Taylor or a la Billy Joel. It's not that I don't want to work with people, but I do just love doing my own thing.
Brian McKnight
#26. There'll come a writing phase where you have to defend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.
James Taylor
#27. The best thing is when you hear somebody take your song and make something great of it.
James Taylor
#28. [God] wants you to have something far better than riches and gold, and that is helpless dependence upon Him.
James Hudson Taylor
#29. People should watch out for three things: avoid a major addiction, don't get so deeply into debt that it controls your life, and don't start a family before you're ready to settle down.
James Taylor
#30. I think of myself as a highly spiritual person, but without - I was never really given a religion or a religious experience or a community to sort of subscribe to.
James Taylor
#31. Just nine lucky soldiers had come through the night, half of them wounded and barely alive. Just nine out of twenty was headed for home, with eleven stories to tell.
James Taylor
#32. To me, very much of what is artistic is people's very creative and inventive ways out of impossible situations.
James Taylor
#33. A concert is always like a feast day to me.
James Taylor
#34. It is not so much the greatness of our troubles, as the littleness of our spirit, which makes us complain.
James Hudson Taylor
#35. Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you gotta do is call, and I'll be there, 'cause you've got a friend.
James Taylor
#36. I don't take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.
James Taylor
#38. But it's only after you've played it on the road 20 or 30 times that it becomes really finished and polished ... and you realize what it means, and you get the phrasing right.
James Taylor
#39. I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.
James Taylor
#40. When you write a song, it may come from a personal space, but it very seldom actually represents you. It comes out of a sort of mood of melancholy, somehow. It's almost theatrical.
James Taylor
#41. James scoffed. "We are not being held prisoner. You're so dramatic."
"Oh yeah, she just kidnapped us and told us the only way we're going to be let go is if we go to other alien planets and steal from them. You're right, James, I'm clearly overly overreacting," Kat snapped.
L. Taylor
#42. Memories, James thought, thank God we have them. They help us to recall what's long gone, and we can live again in the past with those we once loved.
Barbara Taylor Bradford
#43. Knowing when to quit is probably a very important thing, but I just am not ready.
James Taylor
#44. I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others.
James Taylor
#45. I know there are people who don't like their audience or like the experience of being recognized or celebrated, but my audience has been very good - they don't bother me and when they do contact me it's usually on the nicest possible terms.
James Taylor
#46. I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about black music, about soul music.
James Taylor
#47. It's the nature of human consciousness to look for trouble constantly, and we find it. We find it.
James Taylor
#48. We could never have guessed
We were already blessed
where we are ...
James Taylor
#49. I don't reinvent myself in any major way. It seems to be a slow evolution. I go back and visit certain themes that I feel strongly about and resonate with me emotionally.
James Taylor
#50. I've written a number of songs over the years and it's a big part of my life, this sort of tension between a longing for home and the call for the open road. It's sort of like a tug between two families. I even love to miss my home.
James Taylor
#51. You have to choose whether to love yourself or not.
James Taylor
#52. I think it surprises a lot of people that I'm still around, you know, still - that I'm not pushing up daisies, as they say.
James Taylor
#53. Do not have your concert first, and then tune your instrument afterwards. Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer, and get first of all into harmony with Him.
James Hudson Taylor
#54. Ireland, Italy and Brazil are the most musical places for me. They're extremely musical cultures and anything you pitch they basically catch.
James Taylor
#55. I can take criticisms but not compliments.
James Taylor
#56. I don't find the songs; they find me. I just strum my guitar and wait for a lyric to come.
James Taylor
#57. That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind.
James Taylor
#58. The relationship, the marriage, the commitment, the partnership ... This is the holy ground.
James Taylor
#59. Performing is a profound experience, at least for me. It's not as if I sit down and play 'Fire and Rain' by myself, just to hear it again. But to offer it up ... the energy that it somehow summons live takes me right back, and I do get a reconnection to the emotions.
James Taylor
#60. There ain't no doubt in my mind that love is the finest thing around
James Taylor
#61. One of my earliest memories was me singing 'Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin' at the top of my voice when I was seven. I got totally carried away. My grandmother, Sarah, was in the next room. I didn't even realise she was there. I was terribly embarrassed.
James Taylor
#62. The sides are steep and the nights are long and cold down in the hole, light and love and the world above mean nothing to the mole.
James Taylor
#63. Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.
James Taylor
#64. I'm trying to look at my blessings and how amazingly well against all odds things have turned out for me.
James Taylor
#65. There are three stages to every great work of God; first it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.
James Hudson Taylor
#66. It's true that I can write a song and not really be sure what the meaning of it is.
James Taylor
#67. I don't read music. I don't write or read music.
James Taylor
#68. I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.
James Taylor
#69. Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose
Won't you let me go down in my dreams?
James Taylor
#70. I think that for him, I'd risk everything."
~ Taylor
Julie James
#71. In nothing do we fail more, as a Mission, than in lack of tact and politeness.
James Hudson Taylor
#72. Well if this is really happening, and this psycho really did kidnap us, I want food.
L. Taylor
#74. I sometimes wonder how many of these lifetime achievement awards you can accept before you have to do the decent thing and die.
James Taylor
#75. I've seen fire and I've seen rain I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend But I always thought that I'd see you again.
James Taylor
#76. I don't think anyone really says anything new.
James Taylor
#77. All invisible from where we stand the connections come to pass, and though too strong to comprehend they affect us not the less.
James Taylor
#78. The Beatles were a phenomenon, but they were also ordinary blokes like anyone else. I was lucky enough to see that side.
James Taylor
#79. It's hard to find a way forward. When you're 18 it happens in huge chunks every day, but after 20 years, growth is much more costly.
James Taylor
#80. Quart of whiskey a day for months working hard on a long poem. Wife hiding bottles, myself hiding bottles. Murderous and suicidal. Many hospitalizations, many alibis.
James Taylor
#81. You know, Taylor, I told his manager that your reputation in this firm is that you can go head-to-head with any man. And win.
Julie James
#82. It does not matter how great the pressure is. What really matters is where the pressure lies
whether it comes between you and God, or whether it presses you nearer His heart.
James Hudson Taylor
#83. I'm glad about what's happening to the music business. This last crop of people we had in the 90s, who are going away now, they didn't like music. They didn't trust musicians. They wanted something else from it.
James Taylor
#84. I think that we're all totally isolated beings and always will be.
James Taylor
#85. Instead, Taylor is concerned with the "conditions of belief" - a shift in the plausibility conditions that make something believable or unbelievable.
James K.A. Smith
#86. Within my heart is carved a sculpture of your love.
James Taylor
#87. I think there's probably a God-shaped hole in everybody's being. Even if God only exists in people's minds, He's still a force.
James Taylor
#88. He's halfway sick and halfway stoned. He'd sure like to kick, but he's too far gone. So they wind him down with methadone.
James Taylor
#89. Creativity is the process that gives life to a new product.
James Taylor
#90. Television news is now entertainment, and the stories are being written by the people that have a special interest in them.
James Taylor
#91. Things started to get out of control when I began reading that I was a superstar.
James Taylor
#92. I played the cello from when I was ten, and then I bought a guitar from the father of some friends of mine and played that for a while. And then when I was fourteen or so, I bought a guitar - a real nice one - in Durham, North Carolina, that I worked with up until I was about twenty-five.
James Taylor
#93. We all have to face pain, and pain makes us grow.
James Taylor
#94. Time will take your money, but money won't buy time.
James Taylor
#95. The report falsely asserts that global warming is causing more extreme weather events, more droughts, more record high temperatures, more wildfires, warmer winters, etc., when each and every one of these false assertions is contradicted by objective, verifiable evidence.
James Taylor
#96. Subtraction stories Accounts that explain "the secular" as merely the subtraction of religious belief, as if the secular is what's left over after we subtract superstition. In contrast, Taylor emphasizes that the secular is produced, not just distilled.
James K.A. Smith
#97. Synchronized with the rising moon Even with the evening star They were true love written in stone They were never alone, they were never that far apart
James Taylor
#98. You can bring your enemies to their knees with the possible exception of the North Vietnamese.
James Taylor
#99. Music reminds us that the universe loves us
James Taylor
#100. Depend on it. God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supply. He is too wise a God to frustrate His purposes for lack of funds, and He can just as easily supply them ahead of time as afterwards, and He much prefers doing so.
James Hudson Taylor
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
