Song Of Myself Quotes

#1. T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, William Blake's "Proverbs of Hell," and Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. I

Robin Rinaldi

#2. When we sat down, Lacey started reading "Song of Myself," and she agreed that none of it sounded like anything and certainly none of it sounded like Margo. We still had no idea what, if anything, Margo was trying to say. She gave the book back to me, and they started talking about prom again.

John Green

#3. See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that."
-from "Song of Myself

Walt Whitman

#4. He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher."
-from "Song of Myself

Walt Whitman

#5. I exist as I am, that is enough" Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

Penelope Douglas

#6. When I put out a record or single I don't allow myself to set up expectations like, 'This song must be a number one hit. Its got to sell X amount of records.'

Scott Weiland

#7. I had to take a bit of a break and fast for a while, but then I found myself very, very hungry when I got back to [song-writing].

Damien Rice

#8. It seemed so simple in a lot of ways, to use a basic melody to pull away from myself. To ease the pain and hide my feelings deep within a metaphor that only I understood. I couldn't have foreseen that my quiet and dark night of the soul would start me down a path of expression through song.

Mike Ericksen

#9. I get an audience personally involved in a song - because I'm involved myself. It's not something I do deliberately: I can't help myself. If the song is a lament at the loss of love, I get an ache in my gut. I feel the loss myself and I cry out the loneliness, the hurt and the pain that I feel.

Frank Sinatra

#10. I have enough rhythm to blend at this point. I have enough rhythm to blend one song into another. But man, I have such respect for the art of deejaying. I hesitate to even call myself a deejay.

Talib Kweli

#11. When I first started writing these kind of songs that would eventually become Decemberists songs, I was writing them because I knew that nobody was listening at the time and that it wouldn't hurt to challenge myself and get weirder and see if I could alienate more people

Colin Meloy

#12. Don't let the sun go down on me
Although I search myself, it's always someone else I see
I'd just allow a fragment of your life to wander free
But losing everything is like the sun going down on me

George Michael

#13. I could wrap myself in the warm cocoon of a song and go anywhere.

Johnny Cash

#14. In New York I heard A Piece of Ground, written by a white South African, Jeremy Taylor. I modified it a little and sang it myself. That song is very special to me because it deals with the land question in southern Africa. We were dispossessed of our land,

Miriam Makeba

#15. I never pigeonholed myself - the only reason you'd want to pigeonhole is to monetize your business and, as a person, I don't see the importance of doing that. My music took off above the rest of those things: You can just make a song, put it on a CD, and get it out to all these people.

M.I.A.

#16. I like challenging myself. I like the challenge of rapping to fast beats, rapping to beats that are super slow, whatever. I like the challenges, so I'm not afraid to take on any piece of music and create a song to it if it feels right to me.

Will Ferrell

#17. I was 18, at art school, and saw this cute boy playing banjo. I was obsessed. I taught myself how to play. I listened to a lot of country and just messed around. The second song I wrote on the banjo was 'Good to Be a Man.' That what's got me signed.

Elle King

#18. I find myself improvising a lot. But, sometimes I'll come us with a chorus or just one line and it will sort of hang out for a long time before it get's flushed out into a real living song ...

Kate Brown

#19. For music, I always just played music myself - and, I had rock bands and wrote songs and put bands together that were loud, but not especially good. That was sort of the place music had in my career.

Michael Cerveris

#20. I live my life in widening circle That reach out across the world. I may not ever complete the last one, But I give myself to it. I circle around God, that primordial tower. I have been circling for thousands of years, And I still don't know: am I a falcon, A storm, or a great song? [I, 2]

Rainer Maria Rilke

#21. I have enjoyed writing songs for so long ... it felt like in order to make music that I could relate to myself, I would have to be a part of the writing process.

Bridgit Mendler

#22. I'm actually embarrassed by the idea of writing songs about myself - I imagine someone hearing them and thinking This guy is a bit self-obsessed. I don't know if I really have a persona, in that respect. I want to just make the music and hide away.

Max Tundra

#23. Would you tell Dank that I will alway love him? That I'm sorry that I can't leave here. I'm protecting those I love. But I will think of him every day and I will hum his song to myself every night as I go to sleep.

Abbi Glines

#24. I write my own lyrics completely on my own. Sometimes I have people helping me with concepts or like choruses and stuff sometimes, but mostly I write all my own songs by myself, especially the verses and a lot of the choruses.

Big Sean

#25. I think the best songs that come to me are ones that you sort of listen for. The ones - when I listen to some of my old stuff, I can tell when I had a good idea, but I forced it through, and I can hear myself - the bit that I've written, which sounds clunkier than the stuff that just sort of comes.

Nick Lowe

#26. I live in heels. Give me a pair of flip-flops and I'll trip all over myself.

Brenda Song

#27. My father referred to it as "the finest song ever written for fifteen fingers." He made me play it when I was getting too full of myself and felt I needed humbling. Suffice to say I practice it with fair regularity, sometimes more than once a day.

Patrick Rothfuss

#28. 'If I Should Love Again' - I was just so impressed with myself writing something like that. It wasn't a single and people didn't really know about it, but it's a beautiful song and that's part of what I'm loving.

Barry Manilow

#29. I think the suggestion that all my songs are personal is insulting because that assumes that I have a bunch of issues that I feel the need to unload on strangers. That is not the case. It also assumes that I just talk about myself the whole time which, again, is not true.

Elliott Smith

#30. I remember how beautiful it was to fall asleep on your couch and cry in front of you for the first time.
You were the best platform from which to jump beyond myself.
What was wrong with me?

Alanis Morissette

#31. It's really hard for me to sometimes put myself out there, like 'Hey, how do you feel about making music together?' because maybe I'm afraid of rejection or I don't want to put anybody out. It's the Southerner in me, like, 'I don't mean to bother you but do you mind making a song?'

Beth Ditto

#32. I don't much like opera, either. Especially Wagner. There's something about Wagner that's just too piss-German, too fucking Bavarian for a Prussian like me. I like my music to be every bit as vulgar as I am myself. I like a bit of innuendo and stocking-top when a woman's singing a song.

Philip Kerr

#33. I've had lots of friends who've gone through 'Battlefield' situations in their relationships, so when I was singing the song I put myself in their position and tried to imagine what they were going through. I got so, so into it and I think you can tell.

Jordin Sparks

#34. In the beginning, there was a kind of energy that - like an urgency to express myself, and the songs just couldn't be held in. But I think it changes, the nature of how that - what that energy is. And I need to court the muse in a much more serious way.

James Taylor

#35. I have some irrepressible pop impulses to write an appealing, concise song. And I also have some irrepressible kind of restlessness as well, and I need to keep myself interested. When I'm left to my own devices, there's a struggle.

Andrew Bird

#36. Pop is an easy way for evil business people to make a lot of money. But I find myself humming a Christina Aguilera song every once in a while.

Brandon Boyd

#37. When I was 19 I went to art school. I had six months of teaching myself to play baritone ukulele under my belt, so was sort of a novice folkie ... I was singing folk songs at that time.

Joni Mitchell

#38. I situate myself, and seat myself,
And where you recline I shall recline,
For every armchair belonging to you as good as belongs to me.
I loaf and curl up my tail
I yawn and loaf at my ease after rolling in the catnip patch.
(From Meow of Myself, from LEAVES OF CATNIP)

Henry N. Beard

#39. Most of the songs are, in a roundabout way, actually addressed to myself, there's a certain aspect of the songs that's very confessional, very unadulterated ... It was a very unfettered, spiritual experience.

Alanis Morissette

#40. Yet when it happens to me that the music moves me more than the subject of the song, I confess myself to commit a sin deserving punishment, and then I would prefer not to have heard the singer.

Augustine Of Hippo

#41. I actually finally let the Light in and then I was able to create all these songs that were inspired by letting the Light in and doing some self-reflection and just kind of working on myself.

Katy Perry

#42. I would be too self-conscious if I just thought of writing lyrics for a song. I have to trick myself into doing it.

Kim Gordon

#43. A song can be a song where somebody thinks you're crazy. A song that gets released has got to be something that everyone can relate to. Most of the songs that I keep are un-relateable for most people - some of the music I make only for myself and the homies.

Schoolboy Q

#44. I can sort of will that stuff to happen to me if I put myself in the right headspace. Then I can actually get to a space where it won't just be one song that comes through, but a series of them.

Ryan Adams

#45. I still do one song by myself onstage. it gives people the extremely personal thing where it's just me on guitar. But, I think the songs are better as a band. I think with all of the extra little hooks and backing vocals, it just adds to what my initial idea was.

Butterfly Boucher

#46. The music I play and write is all reflective of myself and the experiences in my life. I feel like my whole journey is just collecting stories and songs along the way.

Elle King

#47. I feel I have a responsibility to myself, a responsibility to explain where we're coming from. Because a song or the performance of a song is a lot like a work of art.

Axl Rose

#48. Dream Song of Thunders: Sometimes I go about pitying Myself, While I am carried by the wind Across the sky.

Frances Densmore

#49. I can't write a lie; the world of imagination is no good. I objectively capture my own experiences and those of my friends. I want to put true feelings into words. If I make a song when I'm sad, it's a dark one, but I think that's good. No matter when I want to be true to myself.

Ayumi Hamasaki

#50. I see myself as a traditionalist ... I like traditional things. I like things of substance and value that have been proven. Conceptually, as the songs started to come together, I followed that lead, which is the language I work in.

Jakob Dylan

#51. I prefer rock music - my favorites are R.E.M. and Matthew Sweet - but I think that if Dr. Buckley played Matthew Sweet, some of her patients would not like it. Matthew Sweet has a song called "Sick of Myself," and I am pretty sure that is exactly the wrong song name for a therapist's waiting room.

Craig Lancaster

#52. I once wrote a song so beautiful that I myself couldn't sing it. It's called Plastic Government Cheese Swan, and it's about how the world is plastic and full of government cheese swans.

Thom Yorke

#53. I wrote the song "Show Me" as a prayer to God asking simple, honest questions about life and death and why there is so much suffering in the world. As I grew with the song I realized I shouldn't limit these questions solely to God; I should ask those questions of others and of myself.

John Legend

#54. I give myself time with a guitar and PA to let my subconscious do its thing. This happens repeatedly over a period of time, and slowly, a set of songs emerge that make some sort of sense to me as a body of work that turns into an album.

Scout Niblett

#55. Being a kid myself, I loved playing and I loved playing with words, and making up things and riddles and songs and not afraid of being silly in public.

Malachy McCourt

#56. I don't really pursue writing songs for other people. I guess one of the things I always think about is a good line in a song should be something I can hear myself saying.

Craig Finn

#57. The only reason I would write a break-up song is because my own problem of allowing myself to relate to people.

Zola Jesus

#58. My truth is relevant and my songs are relevant, but I have to recalibrate myself and speed up my vibrations so that I can communicate with the voice of this generation.

Erykah Badu

#59. I think of myself as a singer. The acting is just something I have to do between songs.

Deanna Durbin

#60. I push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would stop and say, 'Oh, that's the hook right there,' I'll move that to the first four bars of the verse and do a new hook.

Drake

#61. I swear I will never mention love or death inside a house,
And I swear I never will translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air.

Walt Whitman

#62. An Indigo Bunting let out a trill, a cheery song, reminding me of better days, of hope and happiness and all the lofty promises a blue canary can sing about. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of the heady morning air. Looking within myself, I searched for the man I once was.

Cheryl R Cowtan

#63. I wanted to do a set of love songs for Valentine's Day so I went through my old material. I found myself scraping around the edges of good taste.

Tom Rush

#64. If I'm not writing about myself, then I sit down with people I really dig writing with and throw 'em out and see if something sticks. Their brain plus mine hopefully will make something interesting and cool and it will just snowball and we'll have a unique song by the end of it.

Kacey Musgraves

#65. When I write songs I write for myself ... I'm writing it as a form of expression, and hoping to find an audience, an audience that responds to music that is honest and lyrical and tells stories.

Patti Scialfa

#66. I never took singing lessons. I guess, I feel comfortable with it, but I do not feel like a singer. I never want to sing without a guitar in my hand. I consider myself more of a songwriter, rather than a singer. I could never be in a wedding band and just sing Marvin Gaye songs.

Jack Johnson

#67. First of all, I'm not a heartthrob. If you saw me in high school, you wouldn't say I'm a heartthrob. Having a hit song, the minute you're famous, you're a heartthrob. I know you don't believe me, but I honestly don't consider myself a heartthrob.

Enrique Iglesias

#68. I've recorded myself for four or five years and have been doing lots of experiments. I'm not that good an engineer - so it always becomes a different song - but I have ideas.

Gustav Ejstes

#69. When I'm sick of myself, and when I don't know what to say as a solo artist, I can write a song for a movie. When I don't know where to turn musically, being in a band - Rilo Kiley or Jenny & Johnny - the collaborative nature is really exciting.

Jenny Lewis

#70. It's very much a piece of myself when I write a song. I don't mean to say it's very personal, like the lyrics mean something personal to me. When I write a song, that's my taste in music - my taste in chord progressions and melodies.

Zooey Deschanel

#71. As a kid, sometimes you have nobody to turn to. I could always go back to some of the sermons and talk to myself in a righteous manner and put that in a song.

Curtis Mayfield

#72. From very early on, I've realized that and I have a mission statement with my songs to entertain, to encourage and to challenge the Body of Christ. That's always kind of the focus of the songs that I write for myself.

Jonny Diaz

#73. With my records, it's just a matter of trying to create something fresh for myself in a very finite context, which is the pop song. I don't know anything about the people who buy my records, and what, if anything, they get out of them.

Tom Verlaine

#74. I write poems for myself and I write poetry that gets torn apart and becomes songs. I have a lot of respect for words, the power of words.

Kurt Cobain

#75. I always thought of myself as the piano player in the band. That, I suppose, I'm confident about, and I guess my songwriting developed as I went along and I got a certain amount of confidence in that. The songs are like my kids, I'm proud of all of them for one reason or another.

Billy Joel

#76. A lot of my songs are about death and the fleetingness of life. It just feels good to remind myself about that a lot. For whatever reason. And it's a beautiful thing, actually. It seems to me like it's a beautiful way to live in the world and to relate to things, with an awareness of temporality.

Phil Elvrum

#77. The songs that I'm able to write are the songs I'm able to write, whatever they may be. The path I've cut for myself is pop music - love-y pop music. That's what I enjoy doing. And I don't think I'm going to get sick of it anytime soon.

Mac DeMarco

#78. What happens is, especially when I was writing for my band, Creedence, and it's the way I write now, I go into "guitar lick" mode. When I do, it sort of leads into a real song. I'd say to myself, your songwriting is coming up with a guitar lick, and the rest is easy!

John Fogerty

#79. My favorite show tune has got to be Stephen Sondheim's "I Remember Sky." It's probably the saddest song of all time I sing it to myself in the mirror. No, I am kidding. That's the joke.

Laura Benanti

#80. My philosophy for producing a record is for everyone involved, including myself, to get out of the way of the song, and at the same time, listen to it as closely as you can, and listen to where the song wants to go.

M. Ward

#81. Achilles' eyes were bright in the firelight, his face drawn sharply by the flickering shadows. I would know is in dark or disguise, told myself. I would know it even in madness.

Madeline Miller

#82. But I
have tamed
myself
I have stomped
on the throat
of my own song

Vladimir Mayakovsky

#83. In the earlier days I did most of the song writing by myself, and I got to a place in my life where I felt it was necessary to go outside my box and get some outside inspiration.

Jason Wade

#84. 'Marvin Gaye' came about my first day in L.A. It was kind of crazy that that's my first song that I wrote and it blew up that much. What's crazy is the next day I wrote 'See You Again,' so that's pretty interesting. I was trying to prove myself as a songwriter.

Charlie Puth

#85. Like I can't cry for myself so I will let this song take all of the things inside I can't let anyone else see and offer it up, as if the sound were some kind of god, and my pain is some kind of sacrifice.

Robert Smith

#86. But at this phase of my life, I want to write and not have to think about whether a song is going to be a hit. I want to explore the music that inspires me, and I don't want to ape myself.

Scott Weiland

#87. Seeing that the 97's are a democracy through and through, inevitably, some of these tons of songs I write will get vetoed. The first time that happened (and every time thereafter), I consoled myself with the thought that sooner or later I'd make a solo record

Rhett Miller

#88. I really moved fast, bro. I don't want a big selection, because I don't want myself in between nobody else's problems, basically. Like, if I know these two people going at it, I'm not about to make a song with either one of them.

Fetty Wap

#89. I started teaching myself guitar because I loved singing so much. Then one day kind of out of the blue I found I was writing a song. It just happened organically.

Kina Grannis

#90. Songs don't really feel like me unless I somehow shed a little secret or open myself somehow or be vulnerable. When I'm singing these songs, it feels like me, and that comes with the vulnerabilities and the strengths and the moments of triumph or whatever.

Brett Dennen

#91. I didn't think of myself as a lead player, especially when we did live shows, because me and Keith used to switch around all the time. He'd take a lead, I'd play rhythm. Sometimes even within one song. It wasn't strict and regimented.

Mick Taylor

#92. Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I'm really not worth being called an artist at all.

Lady Gaga

#93. 'The Taxi Ride,' from my second album, is one people want to hear a lot. I'm consciously trying to walk on the sunny side of the street, to really lift myself into a place of greater positivity, and that's a sad song.

Jane Siberry

#94. I take chances. I don't limit myself. I don't think anybody who listens to Boston would have predicted hearing a female rapper on the beginning of the song 'Sail Away.' But that's what fit.

Tom Scholz

#95. I'm trying to separate myself from other people by having songs that would be considered - technically - original things. I don't seek out mashups. I'm associated with the whole mashup movement, and it's too bad because I'm not a huge fan of them.

Girl Talk

#96. By the time I was six or seven-years-old, I had learned several techniques of how to use my voice and was able to choose the sound I wanted to distinguish myself, so I started writing songs on the piano.

Wendy Starland

#97. I'll see ya," I said in a neutral tone. I wasn't sure whether to
be annoyed by Simon or by myself, or by both of us. "I can walk
home," I added as Simon trudged alongside me to the walkway
leading up to Wind Song.
"I can see that. You're very talented at it.

Amanda Howells

#98. I would love to have a song that I wrote by myself to win a 'Song of the Year' award.

Miranda Lambert

#99. I operate in such a vacuum. I write by myself, it's a very solitary experience, and I'm not used to, I've never had a label or anyone to say, "We wanna hear a single, we gotta come back and retool some of these songs until they're more catchy."

Nicholas Thorburn

#100. I'm not one of those people who write all the time. Sometimes I'll go several months without writing anything. I'll sometimes second guess myself and wonder if I'll ever write another song.

Warren Haynes