Top 100 Quotes About Joni Mitchell
#1. We love our lovin' ... but not like we love our freedom.
Joni Mitchell
#2. It's [Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You"] been one of my favorite songs for my entire life.
Jane Monheit
#3. White rhythm is waltzes, marches, and the polka. In Africa, rhythm is used for a celebratory groove, but white rhythm doesn't have such an enormous vocabulary of spirits. It's basically militant.
Joni Mitchell
#4. I was really lost for a while in my teens. I was angry. But when I found music - Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell - it was a new discovery. It was a door to this other world where I wanted to be.
Ray Lamontagne
#5. When you love a song so much you have to sing, you know how you feel - it releases something in you that resonates as true, whether it's James Brown or Joni Mitchell.
Bonnie Raitt
#6. I'm a fine artist working in a commercial arena, so that's my cross to bear
Joni Mitchell
#7. When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark.
Joni Mitchell
#8. I know my generation - a lot of them, they're getting old now, and they want to think back fondly, they want to kid themselves. A lot of them think, 'Yeah, we were the best.' That's the kiss of death. That's non-growth. And also that's very bad for the world.
Joni Mitchell
#9. Do you want - do you want - do you want to dance with me baby?
Joni Mitchell
#10. I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' He gets a bad rap; he's very misunderstood. He's a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers.
Joni Mitchell
#11. Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl. Most of my best
work came out of it.
Joni Mitchell
#12. Acid, booze, and ass, needles, guns, and grass, lots of laughs.
Joni Mitchell
#14. Well something's lost but something's gained in living every day.
Joni Mitchell
#15. I did a song, "Court and Spark," for a Joni Mitchell tribute album that's yet to see the light of day. So she's someone I'd like to do something with, sure. I worked with the great guitar player Bill Frisell on Phantom Moon - that was fun. I'm such a fan; he's amazing.
Duncan Sheik
#16. What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song.
Joni Mitchell
#17. I come from pioneer stock, developers of the West, people who went out into the wilderness and set up home with nothing but a pair of oxen.
Joni Mitchell
#18. When you're trying to pass on the best of the stuff you're culling to what should be a hungry culture but you have it diminished ... that's kind of disappointing.
Joni Mitchell
#20. Paul Simon started piling up a lot of words, more than the bar could handle, and I stopped!
Joni Mitchell
#21. And the seasons they go 'round and 'round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.
Joni Mitchell
#22. Rationally I have no hope, irrationally I believe in miracles.
Joni Mitchell
#23. If I'm censoring for anyone, it's for my parents. They are very old-fashioned and moral people. They still don't understand me that well.
Joni Mitchell
#24. The rock & roll industry is very incestuous, and we have all been close at one time or another. A lot of beautiful music and a lot of beautiful times came from that. A lot of pain, too, because, inevitably, different relationships broke up.
Joni Mitchell
#25. I never loved a man as far as I could pitch my shoe.
Joni Mitchell
#26. Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm. They cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable, or mineral.
Joni Mitchell
#27. Ira Gershwin, shame on him. I mean, some of the writing.
Joni Mitchell
#28. Nobody understood The Reoccurring Dream, but after September 11, when we were coerced to do a national duty and go out and shop, surely people could begin to see what I was getting at.
Joni Mitchell
#29. Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.
Joni Mitchell
#30. Fear is like the wilderland - Stepping stones or sinking sand
Joni Mitchell
#31. One of the biggest obstacles I've overcome in my life was thinking I didn't deserve to be successful. Artistically I'm not as much of a heavyweight as someone like Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell, because I'm not a creator of original music, and I worried about that for years.
Bonnie Raitt
#32. I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?
Joni Mitchell
#34. My family could only afford to get me the box of eight Crayola crayons, but I craved the one with all 24 colours. I wanted magenta and turquoise and silver and gold.
Joni Mitchell
#35. On first listening, Joni Mitchell's 'Court And Spark,' the first truly great pop album of 1974, sounds surprisingly light; by the third or fourth listening, it reveals its underlying tensions.
Jon Landau
#36. Joni Mitchell had it right: "They paved paradise / and put up a parking lot." But perhaps, in the near future, we could add a line of hopeful epilogue to that song: then they tore down the parking lot / and raised up a paradise
Richard Louv
#37. But you know it's hard to tell
When you're in the spell if it's wrong or if it's real
But you're bound to lose
If you let the blues get you scared to feel
Joni Mitchell
#38. People have these incredible expectations. So instead of being inspired by, say, Joni Mitchell's music, I look at it and say to myself, 'I'm going to quit - why would I think of writing or performing after listening to that?'
Idina Menzel
#39. Bob [Dylan] is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.
Joni Mitchell
#40. I'm not a kiss-and-teller. I never named names.
Joni Mitchell
#41. I'm not a pitiable creature. It's just that I suffer very eloquently.
Joni Mitchell
#43. I didn't think I had much of a following in the south. I thought I was anonymous down there so I kept to the south. I found in certain pockets that I was quite recognizable, and I just hit a wig store.
Joni Mitchell
#44. I used to be monastic, almost. Now I'm like a Tibetan that has discovered hamburgers and television. I'm catching up on Americana.
Joni Mitchell
#45. My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I'm a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to me, 'Girl, you make me see pictures in my head!' and I took that as a great compliment. That's exactly my intention.
Joni Mitchell
#46. I've always associated consciousness with artists like Bob Marley or Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan. You know, artists that really talked about what was going on in the world and really artists that are timeless.
Will Ferrell
#48. I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them.
Joni Mitchell
#49. Richard got married to a figure skater, and he bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator.
Joni Mitchell
#50. I would make tea for Joni Mitchell or clean her car, anything to be in the studio and watch her work.
Sheena Easton
#51. In New York, the street adventures are incredible. There are a thousand stories in a single block. You see the stories in the people's faces. You hear the songs immediately. Here in Los Angeles, there are less characters because they're all inside automobiles.
Joni Mitchell
#52. An artist needs a certain amount of turmoil and confusion.
Joni Mitchell
#53. You can give me 400,000 hostile people and I won't even break sweat. If you give me 200 adoring people, my mouth will dry out.
Joni Mitchell
#54. I lost my daughter at 21. I had to give her up because I was broke, no place to take her, no money to take her. That was very traumatic.
Joni Mitchell
#55. You know that it never has been easy
Whether you do or do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of the extremities
Or stick to some straighter line.
Joni Mitchell
#56. Once I got the open tunings for some reason, I began to get the harmonic sophistication that I heard that my musical fountain inside was excited by. Once I got some interesting chords to play with, my writing began to come.
Joni Mitchell
#57. Adele's voice is incredible. Chet Baker also has one of my favorite voices of all time, and so does Joni Mitchell. And Frank Black. Oh, and Stevie Nicks.
Megan Boone
#58. I'm drinking champagne, got the head phones up high, can't numb you out.
Joni Mitchell
#59. I didn't like the sound of people gasping at the mere mention of my name. It horrified me.
Joni Mitchell
#60. Heart and humor and humility, he said will lighten up your heavy load.
Joni Mitchell
#61. Eventually, with success, I started to feel more and more isolated - like I didn't have a community of artists.
Joni Mitchell
#62. When I felt that fame, people were nosing me out, well I moved on. I used traveling names. Wigs, if necessary.
Joni Mitchell
#63. Some people are upset to see you doing ordinary things. Those people, if they were a celebrity, they would have an entourage.
Joni Mitchell
#64. But I have a tremendous will to live and a tremendous 'joie de vivre,' alternating with irritability.
Joni Mitchell
#65. I have a tremendous joie de vivre ... alternating with irritability of course.
Joni Mitchell
#66. The songwriting was almost like something I did while I was waiting for my daughter to come back.
Joni Mitchell
#67. All the news of home you read, more about the war and of bloody changes.
Joni Mitchell
#68. I see the entire world as Eden, and every time you take an inch of it away, you must do so with respect.
Joni Mitchell
#69. If you're smart or rich or lucky
Maybe you'll beat the laws of man
But the inner laws of spirit
And the outer laws of nature
No man can
Joni Mitchell
#70. My individual, psychological descent coincided, ironically, with my ascent into the public eye.
Joni Mitchell
#71. An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child.
Joni Mitchell
#73. I don't like to make fluffy little songs, but now I want to make some light songs.
Joni Mitchell
#74. Oh, the jealousy, the greed is the unraveling. It's the unraveling and it undoes all the joy that could be.
.
Joni Mitchell
#75. A little lawyer on the tube, he said, its so easy now, anyone can sue.
Joni Mitchell
#78. Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air and feather canyons everywhere, I've looked at clouds that way.
Joni Mitchell
#79. I could drink a case of you, darlin' ... and I would still be on my feet, yes I would still be on my feet ...
Joni Mitchell
#80. When I came to California, it was the mecca of the world. Every young person on the planet wanted to be here.
Joni Mitchell
#81. We are stardust, we are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.
Joni Mitchell
#82. It's in my stars to invent; I was born on Madame Curie's birthday. I have this need for originals, for innovation. That's why I like Charlie Parker.
Joni Mitchell
#83. My goal as a writer is more to comfort than to disturb.
Joni Mitchell
#84. The land of litigation, the courts are like game shows. Take what's behind the curtain the jury cries.
Joni Mitchell
#86. Elusive dreams and vague desires fanned to fiery needs by deadly deeds of falling empires.
Joni Mitchell
#87. One of the greatest experiences I ever had was listening to a conversation with Joni Mitchell and Wayne Shorter. Just to hear them talking, my mouth was open. They understand each other perfectly, and they make these leaps and jumps because they don't have to explain anything.
Herbie Hancock
#88. At the point where I'm trying to force something and it's not happening, and I'm getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go and pick up the guitar.
Joni Mitchell
#89. In terms of fiction, I'd rather go out and have a good time than read a book about someone having a good or bad time.
Joni Mitchell
#90. The bands and the roadies, love 'em and leave 'em. It's pleasure to try 'em, but trouble to keep 'em.
Joni Mitchell
#91. We've been waiting for a format like triple-A where you can hear Crowded House, Joni Mitchell and R.E.M.
Vonda Shepard
#92. People will tell you were they have gone, they'll tell you where to go, but until you get there for yourself you never really know.
Joni Mitchell
#93. We managed to put together a compilation that had some creativity to it. In the meantime I was listening to the free radio stations and I noticed that during their war coverage they were playing these songs born out of the Vietnam War that were all critical of the soldiers.
Joni Mitchell
#94. As a kid, I was listening to Aretha Franklin, Etta James and hip-hop as well as music my parents were listening to, like Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen.
Alanis Morissette
#95. Definitely I grew up listening to Joni Mitchell, and I think she is a wonderful writer, so she is probably part of me.
Jane Siberry
#96. I create by feeling rather than by intellectualizing.
Joni Mitchell
#97. My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#98. Buddy Holly and the early rock 'n' roll was no lighter than the way I play. It's very minimal.
Joni Mitchell
#99. When the spirit of child's play enters into the creative process, it's a wonderful force and something to be nurtured.
Joni Mitchell
#100. He saw my complications and he mirrored me back simplified, and we laughed how our perfect world would always be denied.
Joni Mitchell
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