Top 275 Quotes & Sayings by Joni Mitchell

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Canadian musician Joni Mitchell.
Last updated on November 25, 2024.
Joni Mitchell

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".

I see the entire world as Eden, and every time you take an inch of it away, you must do so with respect.
I had made all these rules for myself: I'm not writing social commentary, I'm not writing love songs.
My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species. — © Joni Mitchell
My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species.
No one likes to have less than they had before. That's the nature of the human animal.
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.
I get the same charge from juxtaposition of colors as I do from juxtaposition of chords.
Paul Simon started piling up a lot of words, more than the bar could handle, and I stopped!
This is a nation that has lost the ability to be self-critical, and that makes a lie out of the freedoms.
I have always thought of myself as a painter derailed by circumstance.
I'm a little young for retirement.
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.
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.
I sing my sorrow, and I paint my joy. — © Joni Mitchell
I sing my sorrow, and I paint my joy.
Ira Gershwin, shame on him. I mean, some of the writing.
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.
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.
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.
To enjoy my music, you need depth and emotionality.
I used to be monastic, almost. Now I'm like a Tibetan that has discovered hamburgers and television. I'm catching up on Americana.
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.
I hate show business.
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.
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.
There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said.
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.
I learned a woman is never an old woman.
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.
Fame is a series of misunderstandings surrounding a name.
You wake up one day and suddenly realize that your youth is behind you, even though you're still young at heart.
The God of the Old Testament is the depiction of evil.
My life came down to being a granny and watching a lot of television.
I'm not a pitiable creature. It's just that I suffer very eloquently.
I believe that I am male and I am female.
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.
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.
I've got 50 different tunings in the guitar.
I certainly don't want to be an angry old artist.
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
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.
Augustine, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are confessional writers and all three make me sick. I have nothing in common with them.
I don't like to make fluffy little songs, but now I want to make some light songs.
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.
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.
The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music.
Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.
I see music as fluid architecture.
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 always thought the women of song don't get along, and I don't know why that is.
I do have this reputation for being a serious person. — © Joni Mitchell
I do have this reputation for being a serious person.
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.
I find a lot of poetry to be narcissistic.
Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980.
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.
An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child.
But I have a tremendous will to live and a tremendous 'joie de vivre,' alternating with irritability.
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.
When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark.
I'm a very analytical person, a somewhat introspective person; that's the nature of the work I do.
When I came to California, it was the mecca of the world. Every young person on the planet wanted to be here.
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.
The thing that gave me the most pain in life, psychologically, and it gave me tremendous pain psychologically, is man's disrespect for nature.
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