Top 275 Quotes & Sayings by Joni Mitchell - Page 2

I think I would go further into fine arts, I think, if I were to continue.

My goal as a writer is more to comfort than to disturb.

I come from pioneer stock, developers of the West, people who went out into the wilderness and set up home with nothing but a pair of oxen.

Everyone I know has attention deficit, and they say it with great pride. It's a bad time to be right.

People used to say nobody can sing my songs but me - they're too personal.

I lost my daughter at 21. I had to give her up because I was broke, no place to take her, no money to take her. That was very traumatic.

My individual, psychological descent coincided, ironically, with my ascent into the public eye.

I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them.

America is in a runaway-train position and dragging all the world with it. It's grotesquely mentally ill.

The songwriting was almost like something I did while I was waiting for my daughter to come back.

I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?

I love to dance.

My parents told me I'd point to a bed of flowers and say 'Pink. Pretty,' before I knew any other words.

You have this mounting aggressive ignorance with the rabbit's foot of their particular religion. You don't really have any kind of spiritual law, just a kind of a rabid mental illness. The songs are a little slice of life.

I have one piece of music, since 1997, and I don't see it having lyrics. Where does it go in this world? So I haven't recorded it.

Buddy Holly and the early rock 'n' roll was no lighter than the way I play. It's very minimal.

There was this mountain village in Russia where my music was getting in on some German radio station. I remember this because music used to get up to Saskatchewan from Texas. Late at night after the local station closed down.

In terms of fiction, I'd rather go out and have a good time than read a book about someone having a good or bad time.

In some ways, my gift for music and writing was born out of tragedy, really, and loss.

I can't remember anything I ever wrote.

I conceived in art college at the age of 20, near the end of term.

For the first time in my career, I'm working in a fine-arts arena, so I'm finally getting some intelligent reviews.

I'm a Buddhist.

Drag wasn't always counterculture.

Edith Piaf knocked my socks off when I was 8, but I didn't know what she was singing about.

Because I'm so busy and because I think of myself as a painter, I desperately guard the time that I have to paint. And sometimes I'm irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep.

My name had gone stale, and no matter how progressive I got, it was my time to die.

Not to dismiss Gershwin, but Gershwin is the chip; Ellington was the block.

With a painting, you don't have to go back and paint it again.

I see bodies as individual things.

When I began experimenting, people weren't ready for it. Once it's in its second and third generational stages, people can accept it.

I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' He gets a bad rap; he's very misunderstood. He's a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers.

I'd had a rough childhood.

My first four albums covered the usual youth problems - looking for love in all the wrong places - while the next five are basically about being in your 30s.

I couldn't see passion as a bad thing.

Eventually, with success, I started to feel more and more isolated - like I didn't have a community of artists.

What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song.

Van Gogh was impulsive.

The coming of the kids hasn't come out in my art yet.

I came through folk music simply because it was easy to get into it.

If I'm censoring for anyone, it's for my parents. They are very old-fashioned and moral people. They still don't understand me that well.

I'm irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep.

You know, Neil Young is singing Rock n' roll will never die, and Neil never rocked and rolled in his life. I mean, he rocked, but he didn't roll. He has got no swing in him.

The most important thing is to write in your own blood. I bare intimate feelings because people should know how other people feel.

Rationally I have no hope, irrationally I believe in miracles.

Something's lost, but something's gained, in living everyday.

I still believe in the power of the word, that words inspire.

people will tell you were they have gone, they'll tell you where to go, but until you get there for yourself you never really know.

Ask anyone in America where the craziest people live and they'll tell you California. Ask anyone in California where the craziest people live and they'll say Los Angeles. Ask anyone in Los Angeles where the craziest people live and they'll tell you Hollywood. Ask anyone in Hollywood where the craziest people live and they'll say Laurel Canyon. And ask anyone in Laurel Canyon where the craziest people live and they'll say Lookout Mountain. So I bought a house on Lookout Mountain.

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. I thought, that's interesting, because I believe a total unwillingness to cooperate is what is necessary to be an artist — not for perverse reasons, but to protect your vision. The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music. That's why I spend my time now painting.

You've got to keep the child alive; you can't create without it.

Chase away the demons, and they will take the angels with them.

All my battles were with male egos. I’m just looking for equality, not to dominate. But I want to be able to control my vision.

So many things I would have done, but clouds got in my way.

Freedom to me is a luxury of being able to follow the path of the heart, to keep the magic in your life. Freedom is necessary for me in order to create, and if I cannot create I don’t feel alive.

We are stardust, we are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl. Most of my best work came out of it.

And the seasons they go 'round and 'round And the painted ponies go up and down We're captive on the carousel of time We can't return we can only look behind From where we came And go round and round and round In the circle game.

Keep a good heart. That's the most important thing in life. It's not how much money you make or what you can acquire. The art of it is to keep a good heart.

I paint my joy and I sing my sorrow.