Top 154 Quotes & Sayings by James Taylor - Page 2

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.

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.

I enjoy selling my music. I don't enjoy selling myself.

What I've always done as an entertainer is try to come up with things that people will find interesting, or compelling, or humorous.

I don't read music. I don't write or read music.

To me, very much of what is artistic is people's very creative and inventive ways out of impossible situations.

I'm looking forward to being able to retire from being a public figure and being able to afford to be myself!

I don't play the kind of music that works in a football stadium.

It's a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you're being autobiographical. But it's what everyone wants - to get everyone's attention, to have your music make a living for you, to be validated in that way.

Ireland, Italy and Brazil are the most musical places for me. They're extremely musical cultures and anything you pitch they basically catch.

I had a very moral upbringing, and spiritual in a sort of not very specific way.

People have used my songs and guitar style to teach guitar for a long time.

I was a huge Beatles fan. We could talk about who I listened to growing up and what my sources were, but certainly the Beatles were a late, important resource for me, and I just took my guitar and a handful of songs, and I decided, well, I'll just go over and travel around Europe and see what comes of it.

Television news is now entertainment, and the stories are being written by the people that have a special interest in them.

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.

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.

I'm glad that I still have the ability to tour in Europe. I do love it.

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.

The best thing is when you hear somebody take your song and make something great of it.

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.

I have a studio in a barn at home - we rehearse there, we film there and we record there. It's fun to hang out with my guys and see what comes out next.

Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose Won't you let me go down in my dreams?

In the old days gigging was everything. The whole of life was about gigs. Everything was about waiting for the gig and then doing the gig and going nuts and then afterwards the party and all the stuff that goes with it. And then that party continues through your twenties and thirties. I'm now 51, and it's still very much in my blood, but I'm really hard pushed... the gig is the party for me now.

O, it's enough to be on your way. It's enough just to cover ground. It's enough to be moving on. Home: better build it behind your eyes. Carry it in your heart, Safe among your own.

I typically will work on a lyric in a three-ring binder. On the right side, I'll write the lyric, and on the left side, I put in alternate things...and things that might be alternates or improvements. I'll turn the page and do it again. I'll turn the page and do it again, or incorporate the improvements. Eventually, I end up with some material, and often it needs to be ordered.

I feel like if you let someone else create your vision, then it's not true to your band. No one can ever do as good as you want, or as good as you can yourself.

Never give up, never slow down, never grow old and never ever die young.

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.

Won't you look down upon me Jesus, you've got to help me make a stand. You just got to see me through another day.

It's the nature of human consciousness to look for trouble constantly, and we find it. We find it.

We could never have guessed We were already blessed where we are.

My brother Alex fell in love with rhythm and blues early and gave me a strong dose of it.

All invisible from where we stand the connections come to pass, and though too strong to comprehend they affect us not the less.

I know now one thing only matters in these days... true love... love and love alone.

All it really needed was the proper point of view. No one's gonna bring me down.

Don't be sad cause your sun is down, the night doesn't need your sorrow. Don't be sad cause the light is gone, just keep your mind on tomorrow.

Music reminds us that the universe loves us

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.

Shower the people you love with love.

I don't build no heathen temples, where the Lord has done laid a hand. There's a well on the hill, let it be.

To be a musician, especially a singer-songwriter - well, you don't do that if you have a thriving social life. You do it because there's an element of alienation in your life.

There ain't no doubt in my mind that love is the finest thing around

Baby booty, juicy fruity, truck stop cutie, road side beauty, I'm in love with you.

Turn away from your animal kind, try to leave your body, just to live in your mind.

Something I do love about social media is how you can expand your idea. You can make an extension of your art as opposed to just using it for promotion.

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.

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.

Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King and recognize that there are ties between us, all men and women living on the Earth. Ties of hope and love, sister and brotherhood, that we are bound together in our desire to see the world become a place in which our children can grow free and strong. We are bound together by the task that stands before us and the road that lies ahead. We are bound and we are bound.

There's been plenty of adversity, starting the moment he was born. He had a respiratory crisis, and it was touch and go for a week whether he would survive. I think ever since, you can feel this pulse in the guy, an almost physical enthusiasm.

Whenever I see your smiling face, I have to smile myself, because I love you, yes I do.

Try not to try too hard, It's just a lovely ride.

Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you gotta do is call, and I'll be there, 'cause you've got a friend.

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.

['Fire and Rain'] is sort of almost uncomfortably close. Almost confessional. The reason I could write a song like that at that point, and probably couldn't now, is that I didn't have any sense that anyone would hear it. I started writing the song while I was in London...and I was totally unknown.... So I assumed that they would never be heard. I could just write or say anything I wanted. Now I'm very aware, and I have to deal with my stage fright and my anxiety about people examining or judging it. The idea that people will pass judgment on it is not a useful thought.

Maybe my biggest aim is to bring a sense of that old mystery of rock 'n' roll into the new age of today's instantaneous and fast world.

The SECRET to Love is in OPENING up your Heart

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.

It won't be long before another day, were gonna have a good time. And no ones gonna take that time away. You can stay as long as you like

I think good music makes you feel free, and if people feel free when they come to a show or listen to my music, that would mean the world to me.

Shower the people you love with love Show them the way that you feel Things are gonna work out fine if you only will.