A Quote by Suzanne Vega
But I never want to get to the point where I write a safe song or one that represents my sense of a subject in order to appear civilized.
Related Quotes
Everything I write doesn't appear to be biography until later. I often say that I've never written about anything I've experienced. Of course, that's not true. But it doesn't appear familiar to me at all. And maybe that's because I have to be in a kind of coma in order to write. If it appeared familiar, I wouldn't.
I always try to write a song, I never just want to write a record. Originally I was not writing songs for myself. ....And I can say this, most of the people who have recorded my songs are songwriters themselves. ... Even if I don't release it myself, somebody else might hear it and want to record it. When you write a song, it gives it that potential. When you write a song, a song has longevity. ... So I wanted to sing inspirational music, and that's exactly how I approached it-only the words have been changed to declare my relationship with God. Songwriting is my gift from God.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success.
There are just long gaps where I can't find a point of insertion, I can't find a good opening line, I can't find a mood that I want to write into. But once I do, once a line falls out of the air, or I get a little inkling of a subject and I recognize that, it's like the sense that a game has started.
The subject matter that I am really spending my time on has become an acceptable subject matter. Living, lifestyle, family, is now in the forefront of interest in America, and I've just stuck with it. I mean, I've been doing this for years, and I never got angry. I never said, you know, listen, I'm fighting for this subject. That wasn't my point. My point was to continue working in a subject matter, knowing full well that finally it would be recognized as a viable subject once again.
You can't write a song out of thin air. You have to feel and know what you are writing about. ... Talent is only a starting point. You've got to keep working that talent. Someday I'll reach for it and it won't be there. ... Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it. ... The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. ... After you get what you want you don't want it. ... Listen kid, take my advice, never hate a song that has sold half a million copies. ... The song is ended, but as the songwriter wrote, the melody lingers on.
I would never sit and write a song in front of anyone, because you're so vulnerable. I don't know at what point in the process that it becomes acceptable to pass them on. When a song wants to be written, it will be written. When it does come, I will very rarely go back and edit lyrics. I'm quite a rational human being, and the only part of my life that I can't rationalise, or can't make sense of, is how a song gets written or why.
Every time I try to write a song, when I sit down and think I'm going to write, I really want to write a song, and it never works out. It's always when it hits me unexpectedly on a plane or right before I go to bed, something like that.
I teach songwriting a lot, and I always tell my students, 'You gotta write the little songs sometimes to get to the next big song in the chute.' You gotta write 'em to get to it. You never know what's going to be a little song or a big song.
I don't want to write the song that I wrote yesterday, and I don't want to write the song I'm going to write tomorrow; I only write the music I'm writing now.
Writers don't want to appear to be stupid. I don't know - maybe people become writers so that they can prove that they're not. Of course getting a book published doesn't mean that they're not stupid. At a certain point you have to stop trying to prove something and write because you need to think about something and want to communicate, in a very broad sense.
['Fire and Rain'] is sort of almost uncomfortably close. Almost confessional. The reason I could write a song like that at that point, and probably couldn't now, is that I didn't have any sense that anyone would hear it. I started writing the song while I was in London...and I was totally unknown.... So I assumed that they would never be heard. I could just write or say anything I wanted. Now I'm very aware, and I have to deal with my stage fright and my anxiety about people examining or judging it. The idea that people will pass judgment on it is not a useful thought.
I usually don't write songs by people calling me and saying, 'Write a song about this.' Usually I'm just going with what I want to write, so you never know.
Sometimes I get in writing moods and I want to write a song every couple of days. Then sometimes I may not write a song for three weeks. It's just according to how it's hitting me at the time.
When you're like, 'Yo, we gotta write a hit song, we need a hit song right now,' that never works. Every time that happens, I never write a hit song.
I've always had a tendency to keep an emergency exit in a song. I can't remember ever writing a song that is completely and thoroughly depressing; there's always been a way out somehow. A sense of hope in song, regardless of the subject matter.
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