Top 118 Quotes & Sayings by Neil Diamond
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Neil Diamond.
Last updated on November 8, 2024.
I didn't want to repeat my mistakes so I stopped, took some time out and started having therapy. My songs were bringing up feelings inside of me I didn't really understand, so I wanted to understand where they were coming from to help me be a better person and a better songwriter.
I'm throwing myself back in because I like being married. I don't want to end this whole fabulous journey alone. I want someone by my side who I love and who loves me. I've finally found somebody who's up to the task of being my wife, because I'm very high maintenance.
I still need practice in enjoying the fruits of success.
I've looked at photographs of myself during concerts and it sometimes looks as if I'm in a fencing move, with a guitar in my hands instead of a sword.
It's very difficult for me to say 'I love you' but to sing 'I love you' for me is easier.
I don't like all of the music to be serious and deadly.
I'm lucky. Hard work is the key, but luck plays a part.
Because my musical training has been limited, I've never been restricted by what technical musicians might call a song.
I came back to performing with a different attitude about performing and myself. I wasn't expecting perfection any more, just hoping for an occasional inspiration.
When you're on a merry-go-round, you miss a lot of the scenery.
I definitely don't feel like I'm 71. I feel like I did when I was - between 30 and 40. The body ages. The mind doesn't.
If it can affect me, if it has meaning to me, if I feel I can do it well, I will do it and record it and thats why I recorded these songs.
You can't plan to write a great song. It just happens to you. It drops in your lap. It's the same thing with a woman.
I think probably Australians have just a little more taste than most people.
The cardinal rule for any performer is that they should know themselves before they enter the spotlight, and I didn't. I was just Neil and I did what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to get married, so I got married. I was supposed to get a job, so I looked for work.
I don't feel I have to write deep and meaningful songs; they can be light and meaningless. It has to do with the place I am in my life, a really good place.
No, I majored in biology, in a pre-med program.
Songwritng is what I do.
Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory.
Performing is the easiest part of what I do, and songwriting is the hardest.
The main objective in any song, the songs that I write, has always been that it reflect the way I feel, that it touch me when I'm finished with it, that it moves me, that it can take me along with it and involve me in what its saying.
It was a real hand-to-mouth existence in those early days - I'd have whatever dry cereal there was in the house for breakfast, 30 cents to spend on lunch and a hot dog for dinner. I did that for years. So there was definitely a hunger in me, of various kinds, to succeed.
Brooklyn is not the easiest place to grow up in, although I wouldn't change that experience for anything.
I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.
When I need my wife or when I need companionship or someone to talk to, I need it, like, now. So my wife will have to give up whatever she's doing at that moment to tend to my needs. And, in the same way, I would tend to hers. That's not such an easy thing to do.
Chelsea Morning is a great Joni Mitchell song and I guess I'm partial to her lyrics because they show me a slightly different perspective on life.
Song Sung Blue took a lot of compressing and refining, and it has one of my favorite lyrics.
Songs are life in 80 words or less.
There's a mystery to writing, and you don't really know where most of it comes from.
I used to go to my kids' soccer games and I was the only parent who wasn't screaming, because I'd have to do a show that night. It was hard. Moms and dads get more emotional at those soccer and Little League games than at a professional game.
I may have a little bit of a talent for music, but I've learnt to tap into my own self when I write. When I put the drill bit inside my heart, sometimes I come up with something light and frothy, sometimes with something deep and painful, but it's great to connect with the audience.
I like having a woman. I like having someone to come home to, to make all of the hard work feel worth it. I need someone with me. And I want someone.
The lyrics aren't simple, either. They're extremely difficult because I'm trying to say complicated things in as few words as possible.
Home's the most excellent place of all.
Over the years, you grow up, you mature and you see things in a different way, and it's reflected in the writing.
Worse than bad reviews is to be ignored.
The art of love is who you share it with.
When I first started, I worked with three chords in every bar, but I found that tied me down - I'm not a chord-change writer, I'm a songwriter.
Maybe tonight, maybe tonight by the fire all alone you and I. Nothing around but the sound of heart and your sighs.
I couldn't resist. I went over and joined in, and we just sang the song together, ... They had no idea that I had written it, or who I was. I was just some weird guy who wanted to join in on the singing.
Touch a man who can't walk up right, and that lame man, he's gonna fly.
Nothing is sadder than love left unheard.
Love is still a simple act of faith, and a faithful heart is always worth the wait.
Love never doubts or suffers or cries. Love shows no fear, love tells no lies.
My voice is unadorned. I don't try for perfection. I try to be honest and truthful and soulful with the voice I have. If I make mistakes in notes, or there are cracks in notes, I don't fix them. That's the way it is.
I thank the Lord for the night time.
When love is unkind, it is not love anymore.
Crackling Rosie make me smile. God, if it lasts for an hour that's alright, to set the world right. Find us a dream that don't ask no questions.
The truth always stays the same.
I get good vibes from people. There is a thread of DNA that runs from the days that I was a young teenager to these days. It feels good to go back there.
Money talks but it can't sing and dance and it don't walk.
Money talks, but it don't sing and dance, and it don't walk. And long as I can have you here with me, I'd much rather be, forever in blue jeans.
You have to go out there and give a piece of yourself -- your life, your soul. And you better give the audience everything you can -- physically, emotionally, musically. Then maybe they'll accept you and give you a standing ovation at the end.
The music is key. It has the power to transport you. I go from being a slightly insecure, shy kind of a person offstage, to this super-confident, motivated, entity onstage.
I'm trying to find the truth in myself. To play somebody else doesn't interest me. It's not the focus of my life. I can get through most scenes and do the acting part of it, and at best, I'm going to be mediocre.
I followed all life's pleasures wherever they would lead, but someone I can treasure is all I really need.
My music is in young people's lives because it's so much a part of their parents' lives.
Hands, touching hands, reaching out, touching me, touching you.
Don't need to say please to no man for a happy tune.
Then come and as we lay, beside this sleepy glade, there I will sing to you my Longfellow serenade.
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