Top 275 Quotes & Sayings by Joni Mitchell

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Canadian musician Joni Mitchell.

Last updated on November 21, 2024.

Roberta Joan "Joni" Mitchell is a Canadian-American singer-songwriter. Drawing from folk, pop, rock, classical, and jazz, Mitchell's songs often reflect on social and philosophical ideals as well as her feelings about romance, womanhood, disillusionment and joy. She has received many accolades, including ten Grammy Awards and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. Rolling Stone called her "one of the greatest songwriters ever", and AllMusic has stated, "When the dust settles, Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century".

Canadian - Musician | Born: November 7, 1943

Source: Wikipedia

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

I had made all these rules for myself: I'm not writing social commentary, I'm not writing love songs.

Joni Mitchell

My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species.

Joni Mitchell

No one likes to have less than they had before. That's the nature of the human animal.

Joni Mitchell

You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining.

Joni Mitchell

I get the same charge from juxtaposition of colors as I do from juxtaposition of chords.

Joni Mitchell

Paul Simon started piling up a lot of words, more than the bar could handle, and I stopped!

Joni Mitchell

This is a nation that has lost the ability to be self-critical, and that makes a lie out of the freedoms.

Joni Mitchell

I have always thought of myself as a painter derailed by circumstance.

Joni Mitchell

I'm a little young for retirement.

Joni Mitchell

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

I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead.

Joni Mitchell

I sing my sorrow, and I paint my joy.

Joni Mitchell

Ira Gershwin, shame on him. I mean, some of the writing.

Joni Mitchell

My childhood was very difficult. I had every childhood disease and then some, but my parents didn't mollycoddle me. They left me to fight those battles on my own. I guess that was very Canadian, very stoic. But it's good. I had to become a warrior. I had to give up hope and find a substitute for hope that would be far more stable.

Joni Mitchell

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

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

To enjoy my music, you need depth and emotionality.

Joni Mitchell

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

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

I hate show business.

Joni Mitchell

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

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

There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said.

Joni Mitchell

We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn't like. It has no resemblance to democracy.

Joni Mitchell

I learned a woman is never an old woman.

Joni Mitchell

The Beginning of Survival is my best album. I am very proud of it, and I am surprised at it, too. I thought some of Travelogue was a little heavy, but I don't think this is heavy.

Joni Mitchell

Fame is a series of misunderstandings surrounding a name.

Joni Mitchell

You wake up one day and suddenly realize that your youth is behind you, even though you're still young at heart.

Joni Mitchell

The God of the Old Testament is the depiction of evil.

Joni Mitchell

My life came down to being a granny and watching a lot of television.

Joni Mitchell

I'm not a pitiable creature. It's just that I suffer very eloquently.

Joni Mitchell

I believe that I am male and I am female.

Joni Mitchell

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

Rachmaninoff made a musician out of me. His 'Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini' was the piece that sent me into raptures. It spoke to me. To me, it was a tender entreaty for the misunderstood.

Joni Mitchell

I've got 50 different tunings in the guitar.

Joni Mitchell

I certainly don't want to be an angry old artist.

Joni Mitchell

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

Augustine, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are confessional writers and all three make me sick. I have nothing in common with them.

Joni Mitchell

I don't like to make fluffy little songs, but now I want to make some light songs.

Joni Mitchell

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

Back then, I didn't have a big organization around me. I was just a kid with a guitar, traveling around. My responsibility basically was to the art, and I had extra time on my hands. There is no extra time now. There isn't enough time.

Joni Mitchell

The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music.

Joni Mitchell

Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.

Joni Mitchell

I see music as fluid architecture.

Joni Mitchell

I heard someone from the music business saying they are no longer looking for talent, they want people with a certain look and a willingness to cooperate.

Joni Mitchell

I always thought the women of song don't get along, and I don't know why that is.

Joni Mitchell

I do have this reputation for being a serious person.

Joni Mitchell

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

I find a lot of poetry to be narcissistic.

Joni Mitchell

Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980.

Joni Mitchell

I don't like being too looked up at or too looked down on. I prefer meeting in the middle to being worshiped or spat out.

Joni Mitchell

An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child.

Joni Mitchell

But I have a tremendous will to live and a tremendous 'joie de vivre,' alternating with irritability.

Joni Mitchell

I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejected as well as movements that happened later.

Joni Mitchell

When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark.

Joni Mitchell

I'm a very analytical person, a somewhat introspective person; that's the nature of the work I do.

Joni Mitchell

When I came to California, it was the mecca of the world. Every young person on the planet wanted to be here.

Joni Mitchell

I thrive on change. That's probably why my chord changes are weird, because chords depict emotions. They'll be going along on one key and I'll drop off a cliff, and suddenly they will go into a whole other key signature. That will drive some people crazy, but that's how my life is.

Joni Mitchell

The thing that gave me the most pain in life, psychologically, and it gave me tremendous pain psychologically, is man's disrespect for nature.

Joni Mitchell