Anyway, here are some of my favorite songwriting quotes.
"Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul" - Plato
"Set your guitars and banjos on fire and before you write a song smoke a pack of whiskey and it'll all take care of itself.” - Beck Hansen
"When you tune your guitar in a different way, it lends itself to a new way of looking at your songwriting." - Sheryl Crow
"It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it." - Miles Davis
"Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control." - Tracy Chapman
"Music is a higher revelation than philosophy." - Ludwig van Beethoven
"I do more writing by myself than with anybody else. My best thing is sitting...around somewhere with a guitar, and having an idea. You never know where it'd come from. Songwriting is a God-given talent." - Charlie Daniels
"I have a weird life because I live on songwriting royalties, which are a strange income. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn't." - Joe Strummer
"Songwriting is the most terrifying thing to me, because you are really laying your heart out there." - David Friedman
“Songwriters write songs, but they really belong to the listener.” - Jimmy Buffett
“I don’t force it. If you don’t have an idea and you don’t hear anything going over and over in your head, don’t sit down and try to write a song. You know, go mow the lawn… My songs speak for themselves.” - Neil Yong
“It’s just the more you do it the better you get, or at least that’s how I feel in my case. I think it’s a combination of confidence and just having done it this long and just learning. I’m always learning. I’m still honing my craft.” - Lucinda Williams
“I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.” - James Taylor
“Music breeds its own inspiration. You can only do it by doing it. You may not feel like it, but you push yourself. It’s a work process. Or just improvise. Something will come.” - Burt Bacharach
“I never sit down to write. When I’m moved, I do it. I just wait for it to come. You just hear it. I can’t really describe writing. It’s in my head. I don’t think about the styles. I write whatever comes out and I use whatever kind of instrumentation works for those songs…A lot of people don’t listen to the lyrics, really. A lot of people pretty much only listen to the chorus.” - Lenny Kravitz
“I don’t want you to play me a riff that’s going to impress Joe Satriani; give me a riff that makes a kid want to go out and buy a guitar and learn to play.” - Ozzy Osbourne
“I don’t write songs, songs write me.” - Sammy Cahn
“My best songs were written very quickly. Just about as much time as it takes to write it down is about as long as it takes to write it…In writing songs I’ve learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody Guthrie…It’s not me, it’s the songs. I’m just the postman, I deliver the songs…I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.” - Bob Dylan
“Sometimes they work, and sometimes they just won’t. Sometimes you get hung up on them. When that happens, you just throw it back, and maybe come back to it two or three weeks later.” - Loretta Lynn