A Quote by Martie Maguire

I am a really passive person to begin with so I have written a lot of pretty crappy songs with strangers because I let it go in a direction that I didn't feel it should have and I didn't know them well enough to speak up.
And I thought about how many people have loved those songs. And how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs. And how many people enjoyed good times with those songs. And how much those songs really mean. I think it would be great to have written one of those songs. I bet if I wrote one of them, I would be very proud. I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy. I hope they feel it's enough. I really do because they've made me happy. And I'm only one person.
I can't stress enough how important it is to write bad songs. There's a lot of people who don't want to finish songs because they don't think they're any good. Well they're not good enough. Write it! I want you to write me the worst songs you could possible write me because you won't write bad songs. You're thinking they're bad so you don't have to finish it. That's what I really think it is. Well it's all right. Well, how do you know? It's not done!
I just love ballads. I am obsessed with them, so I've written a lot of those. They just kind of touch on all the different types of emotions. Though, I think poppy, feel - good songs are underrated and not seen as artistic enough.
Being a journalist, I never feel bad talking to journalism students because it’s a grand, grand caper. You get to leave, go talk to strangers, ask them anything, come back, type up their stories, edit the tape. That’s not gonna retire your loans as quickly as it should, and it’s not going to turn you into a person who’s worried about what kind of car they should buy, but that’s kind of as it should be. I mean, it beats working.
I go down the street, I say hello to everybody, a stranger or otherwise. I know that they do not know me, but I like to say hello and I think they appreciate it. I notice their faces light up with a smile and I believe that if all the people in our great city...would do that, the whole world would begin to say it is the "Friendly City." You can do a tremendous thing here. We get so absorbed, we do not always speak to our friends. Speak to them, even strangers, you are not going to give offense.
Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are doing pretty well at getting noticed - a lot of people are doing pretty well at it. But you wonder whether they'll last, because many of them don't have the ability to get an audience to love them. You say, "That's a fabulous body" or "I like that song"; you don't say, "I love them because I know them." You can't know them.
I'm good with songs I haven't written, if I like them. I'm glad I didn't write any of them. I already know how they go, so I have more freedom with them. I understand these songs. I've known them for 40 years, 50 years, maybe longer, and they make a lot of sense. So I'm not coming to them like a stranger.
I've always covered some Dylan songs. I do one or two. And I do them because they're great songs. You know some people cover songs they wish they could have written, not me. I like to cover songs I know I could not have ever written.
I don't know why people feel that I am snooty. I am not a person who has ever given an interview on image building. I have never been that person, as I am very confident of what I do. People do PR, but I get completely foxed. I don't know how to do it. I stay away from the limelight, as I think my work should speak on my behalf.
I was stupid enough to think that we ought to speak the truth about each person eulogised, and to make this the foundation, and from these truths to choose the most beautiful things and arrange them in the most elegant way; and I was quite proud to think how well I should speak, because I believed that I knew the truth.
Pretty That's what I am, I guess. I mean, people have been telling me that's what I am since I was two. Maybe younger. Pretty as a picture. (Who wants to be a cliché?) Pretty as an angel. (Can you see them?) Pretty as a butterfly. (But isn't that really just a glam bug?) Cliché, invisible, or insectlike, I grew up knowing I was pretty and believing everything good about me had to do with how I looked. The mirror was my best friend. Until it started telling me I wasn't really pretty enough.
I've written some songs that are pretty scary, but 'Jessica,' 'Ramblin' Man,' and 'Blue Sky' are happy songs. That's the way I wrote them: have-fun tunes to make you feel good.
It's so funny because I listen to songs that I recorded that I didn't really know anything about at the time. Later on I'm starting to feel the songs. Sing them first, feel them later.
It's a very scary time for a lot of people; they feel scared to speak up. There's so much controversy even speaking up about politics to begin with. People try to discredit you at every single corner, especially if you're a woman. So it's hard as an artist to really speak up about this kind of stuff when you're trying to be successful and have a career.
Especially when I first came up here to New York, everybody wanted to hook me up with this guy who's Prince's sound engineer. Almost everybody wanted me to hook up with him and go to L.A. and do all that just because that's the route Prince took. And for a while I was listening to all of that. "Yeah, if it's good enough for Prince, it should be good enough for me." But I mean, that's not the case, really. Prince is a different person than I am. You just got to find the right person for you, whoever you click with.
I feel happy about the songs I've written. I'm a great lover of the craft of songwriting, and I sure admire it in other people when I see it - past and present. I feel comfortable with what I have accomplished. I feel happy to be able to work in that environment, and that I have a lot of songs left to be written, somewhere.
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