Songwriting Quotes

I'm always proud and pleased when people do my songs. It gives me pleasure that they even attempt them, because a lot of my songs aren't that doable.

(Talking about her grandmother Marjorie Finlay)I can remember her singing, the thrill of it," she said. "She was one of my first inspirations.The people around me provided all the inspiration I needed. Everything I wrote (at that time) came from that experience, what I observed happening around me.

There are so many emotions that you're feeling, you can get stifled by them if you're feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment - one simple, simple feeling - and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.

I think people inspire me the most. If I meet a person who is incredibly complex, and all of a sudden, I start thinking in rhymes, that person could be a muse.

I love writing every song I can like a little mini movie. I like to have a character, or some characters, and really paint a picture with the song.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I'd just write.

I write songs about what I go through.

Songwriting is like ... being possessed. You try to go to sleep but the song won't let you.

I've copyrighted 3,000 songs.

The writing of the Beatles, or John and Paul's contribution to the Beatles in the late sixties - had a kind of depth to it, a more mature, more intellectual approach. We were different people, we were older. We knew each other in all kinds of different ways than when we wrote together as teenagers and in our older twenties.

I'm the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that's horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it's so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

I started being me about the songs, not writing objectively, but subjectively. I think it was Dylan who helped me realize that - not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work.

Every single one of the guys that I've written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans.

I still don't know how to express the really delicate personal stuff. People think that Plastic Ono is very personal, but there are some subtleties of emotions which I cannot seem to express in pop music, and it frustrates me. Maybe that's why I still search for other ways of expressing myself. Song writing is a limiting experience in some ways - writing down words that have to rhyme.

I've always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks - you learn craft, you learn structure, all that - as you go.

I have an obsession with knowing the answers to things. When I don't know what happened, it just bothers me, gets under my skin, and I need to write about it.

If something happens to me, you're going to hear about it. I only know how to write songs about my life.

I do write nice songs about the guys who are nice to me! Eventually, I'm sure one of them will write a response - that's a pretty scary concept, actually! But I make sure I only write bad songs about the ones who deserve it.

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn't really involve me thinking about the demo-graphic of people I'm trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

You sit and you let your fingers go to wherever they are going to go. You wait until you start to hear something, and you start to figure out what it is that you're doing. And then you add another piece next to that piece, and wait to see if some kind of pattern or something interesting starts to grow, and then you cultivate it.

Having room to run and having just the space to use your imagination and create stories out of everyday life, I think that had a lot to do with me wanting write. And write songs

I've never had a divorce, but I've seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can't write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I'm able to kind of express it, or their joy.

A songwriter's supreme challenge is being complex and simple at the same time

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I'll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know, I've written a whole song in an hour.

Most of the time, songs that I write end up being finished in 30 minutes or less.

To all the boys who inspired this album: You should've known. ;)

I would just be constantly writing all these zingers - like, 'Burn. That would really get her.' And I know people are going to obsess over who it's about, because they think they have all my relationships mapped out. But there's a reason there are not any overt call-outs in that song. My intent was not to create some gossip-fest. I wanted people to apply it to a situation where they felt betrayed in their own lives.

Factoring in millions of people when I'm writing a song is not a good idea. I don't ever do it.

Most of the time, the songs have jokes in them, little sarcastic things, or purposely kitsch or something. So that's going along with a story, like I do in life, just talking to myself and making fun of stuff and laughing at stuff that's serious. And sometimes it's a good idea to put the laughing into the songs. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's all right just to be serious. But most of the songs have some kind of joke in them.

I don't bother so much about the others' songs. For instance, I don't give a damn about how 'Something' is doing in the charts - I watch 'Come Together' (the flip side) because that's my song.

The abstract music is just more interesting because it doesn't really have anything to say, but if it is good, it creates thoughts and feelings, and I enjoy that. For me, once the music creates those thoughts and feelings, I begin to write a song about it.

I don't think I'd ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

I’ve never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record.

It ( In My Life ) was the first song that I wrote that was really, consciously about my life.... up until then, it had been all glib and throwaway.

I've always just wished that maybe someday people would care about the words that I wrote.

When I was singing about 'All You Need Is Love' I was talking about something I hadn't experienced.

Throughout all of the changes that have happened in my life, one of the priorities I've had is to never change the way I write songs and the reasons I write songs. I write songs to help me understand life a little more. I write songs to get past things that cause me pain. And I write songs because sometimes life makes more sense to me when it's being sung in a chorus, and when I can write it in a verse.

I just said, you know, this is a great track but this lyric, I don't believe it. It sounds like I'm trying to say something, instead of it naturally coming out of me, like I was saying something that I already knew. Anyway, I can't remember what it was. And either I threw it all out or I threw 90 percent of it out, and kept a line or two. That's happened a couple of times to me. Not too often, but a couple of times. Very aggravating when it does happen.

My songs have always been frustrating themes, relationships that I've had. And now that I'm in love, I expect it to be really happy, or at least there won't be half as much anger as there was.

I want to make people feel things when they hear my music I want to give a song to someone who is going through a break up, I want to give a song to someone who loves someone and can't tell them. A song for someone who has just fallen in love and a song for just people who are living their lives.

My nails are my rhythm section when I'm writing a song all alone. Some day, I may cut an album, just me and my nails.

I think Bridge Over Troubled Water was a very good song. Artie sang it beautifully. The Boxer was a really nice record. But I don't think I've written any great songs.

Sometimes the lines in a song are lines you wish you could text-message somebody in real life.

My songs have always had frustrating themes - relationships I've had

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

When I think about the things that cause me pain or the things that cause me trouble or frustration, it's not people asking for my autograph; it's people breaking my heart. That happens to you whether you've sold millions of records or whether you're taking classes at college. You're going to believe people when they say that they love you. I don't leave out details when I write songs about that. I try to make my songs as personal as possible because, ultimately, my music started out as just trying to turn my diary entries into something that was a piece of music. And that has never changed.

It doesn't bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs - because at least they're looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I'm proud of.

Much of songwriting is simply a mystery.

I've made sure that in any situation and with any record label, I'm allowed to write my own music.

Sometimes a song just has to cater to whatever's goin' on. A well-written song is a song that stays true to the subject.

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It's a natural process.

Everything that happens to me gets put into a song. For some reason, I'm really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs. There, I don't hold back: names, dates, times, expressions on people's faces, exactly where we were and how it felt, what I wish I would have said to them in the moment. So I'm not only excited about sharing the songs with fans; I'm also pretty interested to hear the response from the guys I've written about on the record.

I'm a songwriter. Everything affects me.

I want to write a song for someone who has just fallen in love or someone single and living their live.

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don't get me.

Writing 'We Are Never Getting Back Together' was one of the most hilarious experiences I have ever had in the studio because it just happened so naturally.