Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician John Mayer.
Last updated on November 25, 2024.
John Clayton Mayer is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Born and raised in Fairfield County, Connecticut, Mayer attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, but left and moved to Atlanta in 1997 with Clay Cook. Together, they formed a short-lived two-man band called Lo-Fi Masters. After their split, Mayer continued to play local clubs, refining his skills and gaining a following. After his appearance at the 2001 South by Southwest festival, he was signed to Aware Records, and eventually to Columbia Records, which released his first extended play Inside Wants Out. His following two studio albums—Room for Squares (2001) and Heavier Things (2003)—performed well commercially, achieving multi-platinum status. In 2003, he won the Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for his single "Your Body Is a Wonderland".
I've never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, 'We're full.'
I've never been a bad boy.
Ladies, if you want to know the way to my heart... good spelling and good grammar, good punctuation, capitalize only where you are supposed to capitalize, it's done.
I've figured out my learning curve. I can look at something and somehow know exactly how long it will take for me to learn it.
Hopefully people can see my music is tethered to my brain.
I'd like to think the best of me was still hiding up in my sleeve.
People want to see musicians sing things that come from their own mind and own heart in real time, responding to the moment for them.
Sometimes it feels like my life is just one long day.
I wanted to be a blues guitar player. And a singer. And a songwriter. Not a shock jock.
There are people in the world who have the power to change our values.
Atlanta's my musical home. It really was the place where I really came alive.
Sometimes I get so bold and I'm so confident about what I'm doing that I actually try to be more of a dork because it's a really liberating feeling to experience what it's like to not care.
I love being the center of attention.
I'm a good music provider, and I'm fine with that. I'm a quality music manufacturer.
I feel strikingly domestic. We're in our own world with two busses and trucks.
It's very liberating when you finally realize it's impossible to make everyone like you.
I'm not as surprised in going from playing 1,000 seats to 4,000 seats as I was from 100 to 500 seats.
I'm getting to a point where everything is becoming streamlined in my life. I'm learning how to stand onstage for two hours and play in front of thousands of people as if I am completely in the moment every moment.
There's so many inspiring people out there.
There's a constantly applicable nature to soul music, whereas sometimes pop music can be a periodical.
I'm singing what I want to sing based on the emotion of what that day feels like. That's what comes out of my mouth and guitar. That impacts people. They know anything can happen.
I don't write songs in order to stick it to my exes. I don't release underground dis tracks.
I hate being the heartbreaker. Hate it. If I date somebody and it doesn't work out, it's another nightmare for me.
I've realized you can use a fork as a spoon if you use it rapidly enough.
Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix.
Everybody is just a stranger, but that's the danger in going my own way.
There's a certain lack of gimmickry to what I do that makes people in England go: 'Where's the thing?'
I get recognized somewhere in between like local meteorologist and national meteorologist.
You get to a certain age where you prepare yourself for happiness. Sometimes you never remember to actually get happy.
Nothing feels worse than having to break the stage down before the performance, and I mean nothing.
I've learned to appreciate everything that has been given to me.
I have these accidents, these mistakes, these self-inflicted wounds, and then I tear my head to shreds about it for days.
If you told me I was going to live to 240, I would take 10 years off and try and act. I don't have that kind of time, so I'd much rather stick to playing guitar.
I knew what I wanted to do when I was 13 and I had to go through four years of high school to get out. That's a blessing, because I never had to lay on my bed staring up at the ceiling going, 'What am I going to do with my life?'
I can't even explain to you how terrible that feels, that I equate dating a woman with punishment, shame, guilt, disappointment, reproach, reprimand, persecution. It's a nightmare.
I hope that what it comes down to at the end of the day is that people believe that I believe what I'm singing. It comes down to being believable. You don't have to be likeable; generally, though, I think I am.
I need some kind of emotional stake in it to write my lyrics, assuming that place. It might just be an emotion I understand but am not currently experiencing necessarily.
I just like collaborating.
I'm trying everything I can not to be jaded 'cause I don't like jaded musicians.
I like giving people something they don't want to miss the next time. It's a show with little twists and turns and curves. It has me being silly and stupid and compassionate and completely deep.
I have the obsessiveness of someone who's a sober, recovering addict displacing his addiction. Except I never had the addiction.
When you do an interview with me, you're talking to a cheap imitation of the person that I really am. There's no magic in my words, it's just me talking.
If you get half a million, at a certain stage you probably will get 4 million people, if they are able to hear it. The touring thing is unbelievable. It really is amazing from what we did the last tour even to what we are doing now.
Sometimes I wish that I was the weather, you'd bring me up in conversation forever. And when it rained, I'd be the talk of the day.
They say stay in the lines, but there's always something better on the other side.
I've never done anything because I thought it would look cool.
No matter what I do, I'm going to earn it.
I may have taken someone through the wringer psychologically, but I've never been sinister.
Every song I put on a record could be a single and I just pack my bags for it... and the minute it takes off, I'm not gonna be home for a while.
A man's got two shots for jewelry: a wedding ring and a watch. The watch is a lot easier to get on and off than a wedding ring.
I lost my head for a little while.
I'm not an icon. Not even in America.
I don't have anybody telling me what to do.
I feel my shows are like a late-night talk show that we settle down and do every night.
You cannot avoid war in life, you cannot avoid the fear of terrorism, you cannot avoid those things now, they are a part of everyday demeanor.
Life is like a box of crayons. Most people are the 8-color boxes, but what you're really looking for are the 64-color boxes with the sharpeners on the back. I fancy myself to be a 64-color box, though I've got a few missing.
High School is like a spork: it's a crappy spoon and a crappy fork, so in the end it's just plain useless.
I really don't want to be a hunk.
Trying to impress my mother with words was one of my favourite pursuits.
I believe in blues, and I believe that it's been misrepresented.