Sammy Cahn Quotes

#1. When I write songs, I like to write lyrics first, and I think that's different from a lot of singer-songwriters. But I heard Sammy Cahn was asked what comes first, the lyrics or the music, and he said, 'The paycheck.'

Jill Sobule

#2. I thought dying for your country was the worst thing that could happen to you. I think killing for your country can be a lot worse. Because that's the memory that haunts.

Bob Kerrey

#3. Every song, the title dictates the architecture of the song.

Sammy Cahn

#4. Saturday night is the loneliest night in the week.

Sammy Cahn

#5. Do something for the joy of doing it and pray you won't be punished.

Sammy Cahn

#6. You never know when you start a project just how good it can be.

Jenifer Lewis

#7. Love is lovelier The second time around.

Sammy Cahn

#8. Do you think I'm wandering around all day thinking, 'I must write a song called 'Three Coins In The Fountain'?' Only an idiot would do that.

Sammy Cahn

#9. I don't write songs, songs write me.

Sammy Cahn

#10. Much of the time I'm an introvert, by choice spending a lot of time on my own. I suppose liking my solitude is part of a writer's sensibility.

Robyn Davidson

#11. Sure he (Fred Astaire) was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did,..backwards and in high heels.

Robert Thaves

#12. I had no particular image of Chicago in mind when I wrote 'My Kind of Town.' All I wanted to do was write a song in praise of Chicago, and that's what I did.

Sammy Cahn

#13. I don't write songs, songs write me ... Writing a song can be agony or ecstasy. It can take half an hour or half a year ... The popular song is America's greatest ambassador.

Sammy Cahn

#14. We used to be a serious country. When we got attacked at Pearl Harbor, we took on Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. We beat all three in less than four years. We're about to enter the seventh year of this phony war against ... [terrorist groups], and we're losing.

Newt Gingrich

#15. My chutzpah was me singing to Mario Lanza. So Mario looked at me after I talk-sang 'Be My Love' for the first time; he took the lyric out of my hand as contemptuously as you can take a lyric out of someone's hand, and he sang 'Be My Love' back at me.

Sammy Cahn

#16. I fall in love too easily, I fall in love too fast
I fall in love too terribly hard, for love to ever last
My heart should be well schooled, 'cause I've been fooled in the past
And still I fall in love too easily, I fall in love too fast

Sammy Cahn

#17. The things we did last summer I'll remember all winter long.

Sammy Cahn

#18. I must say that it's easy to write nice things about Chicago because it's that kind of town.

Sammy Cahn

#19. Suspense, murder, revenge, scandal; a delicious cocktail party.

Kat Kaelin

#20. I'm a professional songwriter - personal attitudes have nothing to do with writing a song.

Sammy Cahn

#21. The one I tell everyone, the one I'm very, very proud of is 'Call Me Irresponsible.' Simply because I want to say and it's not as facetious as it sounds. It has five syllable words in it.

Sammy Cahn

#22. Take a simple name like Nicholas: you can rhyme it with ridiculous. If you aren't too meticulous. You know, every word's rhymable.

Sammy Cahn

#23. The life of the golfer is not all gloom; There's always the lies in the locker room.

Sammy Cahn

#24. Maybe she hadn't saved the world but she had made a major improvement.

Charles Bukowski

#25. If a man, in a lifetime of 50 years, can point to six songs that are immediately identifiable, he has achieved something. Irving Berlin can sing 60 that are immediately identifiable. Somebody once said you couldn't have a holiday without his permission.

Sammy Cahn