Gordon Lightfoot Quotes

Words are for explaining the mistakes we might have made, names are for calling when there is nothing left to say.

Whitecaps in profusion all around me, but somehow in your eyes I found the strength to sail upon that raging sea.

You will go with me everywhere. When I'm dreaming, you still share my lonely nights.

SPEAK OF TROUBLE highlights the abilities of Lowell Sostomi as singer/songwriter and brings together a talented band of musicians with amazing dexterity, loads of energy, and very original arrangements. Im impressed.

To wear the crown of peace, you must wear the crown of thorns.

Think about the fool who by his virtue can be found in a most unusual situation playing jester to the clown.

If I could read your mind, what a tale your thoughts could tell. Just like a paperback novel, the kind that drugstores sell.

See the judge upon the bench who tries the case as best he can, see the wise and wicked ones who feed upon life's sacred fire, see the soldier with his gun who must be dead to be admired.

Rainy day people all know there's no sorrow they can't rise above.

The giant neon spinning discs are a reminder of the huge role that Sam Sniderman and his store played in the cultural life of Toronto and I believe they should be preserved and remounted in the interests of our city's heritage.

I love jazz. I still do. Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz are so good. I took a notification course in Jazz Orchestration. It wasn't a grandiose as you'd think but I did have to to go to Los Angeles to do it and get an understanding of the keyboard because the keyboard became my tool and I used it a lot in transposing and composing. All the flats and time values. I spent a year doing that because in those days you had to be able to write your own music and read sheets.

Sometimes I think it's a shame, when I get feeling better when I'm feeling no pain.

I liked the American folk style of Woody Guthrie.

I'm not really a bird person or an Audubon guy who studies them, but as I was around them, they interested me.

There was a TV show called Thank Your Lucky Stars, with the catchphrase "I'll give it five!" The Beatles and Stones were so popular when they were on it. One week The Beatles were number one and then the Stones were right on their heels.

I once performed The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald to about 15 sea captains. The song was about a ship that broke in half and sank.

I went on tours with [Bob] Dylan - the big one was in 1975 and called Roaring Thunder Review. I knew him well because I met him around the time he did his second album, in 1963. He recorded one of my songs called Shadows. In the 1970s, it was suggested that we do a duet, because we had the same manager, Albert Grossman, who also managed Odetta and Peter, Paul and Mary. Dylan and I respected what each other did, but I just decided not to do it.

A lot of people influenced me as I was learning but probably Bing Crosby was the most influential, because I would hear his Christmas albums, which my parents played a lot.

When I was 16, I used to drive huge loads of laundry in a three ton truck. I would turn round at night to drive back and see the band in a place north of Toronto called Dunn's Pavilion. I would drive that truck all day and they drive back and all the way until one day I wrecked the truck. I fell asleep and wrecked it. I was OK and so was my helper. I called my dad and the first words out of his mouth were, "are you OK?" I was really lucky I had a kind father.

It was very interesting time to be in England. Even at that point [John] Lennon and [Paul] McCartney influenced my writing. I thought, "maybe there is a huck or two in here I haven't thought of".

Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?

I took the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face from a folk singer called Bonnie Dobson. I knew her and she had a record with that track on it.

I'm a little nuts. I'm a lot nuts. All I know is that in the midst of the madness of this world it's my therapy. The music touches my heartstrings.

Of course I knew The Band's Canadian keyboard player, the late Richard Manuel, but I didn't play that night because I was there as a guest with my record executives. People ask, "why didn't you play?" If I had known I was going to be playing then I would have been prepared for it.

She been looking like a queen in a sailor's dream.

Be calm in the face of all common disgraces.

I worked in a plant when I was 14 for two years. I always wanted to do the summer jobs. Honest to God, I always had to be doing something.

Both the Beatles and The Rolling Stones broke on the music scene the summer I was in England. I can vividly remember hearing She Loves You in August 1963.

If there's a reason for the way that life is I'd like to find it. After all, who's life is it?

Give me a wave I can ride upon, come and show your strength to me.

It seems so lucky to just to have the right of telling you with all my might, you're beautiful tonight.

I had lots of friends who were fighting in Vietnam and I am still friends with veterans of the war.

All that remains is the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Everything is trust, all the rest is dust.

She is my flower and she blooms for the one who loves her best.

I was happy to be in England, because my mother had always loved the royals, and so do I.

I would never have ever dreamed that I would get married again and then all of a sudden you meet somebody. That's the thing about life. It can be so unexpected.

Will you gather daydreams or will you gather wealth? How can you find your fortune when you cannot find yourself?

If you plan to face tomorrow, do it soon.

I never got really good at hockey.

What has changed for me is that I now have a huge family [Lightfoot has four children, from his first two marriages] - the result of my living.

I was a drummer in the bugle band in cadets. I marched. It's probably quite funny to look back on it.

You just get the vibes of your surroundings and it rubs off on you.

I don't know where we went wrong, but the feeling's gone and I just can't get it back.

My parents got my sister and I to go to church and have piano lessons. We were keen and they could see that.

Some years later I met Queen Elizabeth II, in our capital Ottawa at a Canada Day celebration. David Foster and I were doing the show and we both met her afterwards. She told me how much she loved the Canadian Railroad Trilogy. She looked at me and said, "oh, that song", and then said again, "that song", and that was all she said.

There is always something wrong with a song, you can't be perfect.

'If You Could Read My Mind' was written during the collapse of my marriage. It's a great song. No one has any gripes about it. I wondered what my wife and daughter might think. My daughter is the one who got me to correct 'The feelings that you lacked' to 'The feelings that we lacked'.