James Taylor Quotes

['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.

Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you gotta do is call, and I'll be there, 'cause you've got a friend.

I don't think anyone really says anything new.

A concert is always like a feast day to me.

I'm often surprised by classical music and musicians. I've met a large number of them because my wife works for the Boston Symphony, and I'm in that world a lot now. I'm surprised at how difficult it is for people who are classically trained to read music or to memorize music, how difficult it is for them to improvise, to just go off and play. It's sort of, it's like terra incognita. They just, (makes noise) they don't get it.

I think of myself as a highly spiritual person, but without - I was never really given a religion or a religious experience or a community to sort of subscribe to.

I played the cello from when I was ten, and then I bought a guitar from the father of some friends of mine and played that for a while. And then when I was fourteen or so, I bought a guitar - a real nice one - in Durham, North Carolina, that I worked with up until I was about twenty-five.

Without a doubt, the warming of the past 100 years has been a welcome respite from a long and deadly Little Ice Age. The possibility that humans may have contributed to the recent warming does not make it any less welcome.

Don't be sad cause your sun is down, the night doesn't need your sorrow. Don't be sad cause the light is gone, just keep your mind on tomorrow.

Shower the people you love with love Show them the way that you feel Things are gonna work out fine if you only will.

The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.

Ireland, Italy and Brazil are the most musical places for me. They're extremely musical cultures and anything you pitch they basically catch.

I'm looking forward to being able to retire from being a public figure and being able to afford to be myself!

I have a love-hate relationship with the Grammys because I don't see the music world as a competitive sport.

We could never have guessed We were already blessed where we are.

If the gig's going really well, I'm incredibly happy on stage and really feel good about my life and things.

People should watch out for three things: avoid a major addiction, don't get so deeply into debt that it controls your life, and don't start a family before you're ready to settle down.

Being on a boat that's moving through the water, it's so clear. Everything falls into place in terms of what's important and what's not.

If you're an addict, it controls your life and your life becomes uncontrollable. It's boring and painful, filling your system with something that makes you stare at your shoes for six hours.

It's the nature of human consciousness to look for trouble constantly, and we find it. We find it.

The Test arena is a place I have been desperate to get back to, it is the pinnacle of the sport

He's halfway sick and halfway stoned. He'd sure like to kick, but he's too far gone. So they wind him down with methadone.

Do me wrong, do me right, tell me lies, but hold me tight.

A song is what you fall in love with first, but then I think a band's ideals and a band's sense of fashion and a sense of how they treat people is what you fall in love with afterwards.

Music is like a huge release of tension.

I don't find the songs; they find me. I just strum my guitar and wait for a lyric to come.

All invisible from where we stand the connections come to pass, and though too strong to comprehend they affect us not the less.

I find it a lot healthier for me to be someplace where I can go outside in my bare feet.

I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about Black music, about soul music.

O, it's enough to be on your way. It's enough just to cover ground. It's enough to be moving on. Home: better build it behind your eyes. Carry it in your heart, Safe among your own.

One of my earliest memories was me singing 'Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin' at the top of my voice when I was seven. I got totally carried away. My grandmother, Sarah, was in the next room. I didn't even realise she was there. I was terribly embarrassed.

If you think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.

It's probably foolish to expect relationships to go on forever and to say that because something only lasts 10 years, it's a failure.

Baby booty, juicy fruity, truck stop cutie, road side beauty, I'm in love with you.

The report falsely asserts that global warming is causing more extreme weather events, more droughts, more record high temperatures, more wildfires, warmer winters, etc., when each and every one of these false assertions is contradicted by objective, verifiable evidence.

I am myself for a living. I don't animate a character.

You have to choose whether to love yourself or not.

In my mind I'm going to Carolina. Can't you see the sunshine, can't you just feel the moonshine? Ain't it just like a friend of mine, to hit me from behind, and I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind.

I was in chemical jail.

I'm glad about what's happening to the music business. This last crop of people we had in the 90s, who are going away now, they didn't like music. They didn't trust musicians. They wanted something else from it.

I've seen fire and I've seen rain I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend But I always thought that I'd see you again.

I'm very unstable; there's no stability in a musician's life at all. You live on a bus or on the road hand to mouth and you don't know where your money's coming from.

Shower the people you love with love.

I'm trying to look at my blessings and how amazingly well against all odds things have turned out for me.

I gathered up my sorrows and I sold them all for gold. And I gathered up the gold, and I threw it all away.

Though the body sleeps, the heart will never rest.

Songs are like myths. Myths are useful because they allow you to cast yourself and your life and your own experience. And for some people, 'Fire and Rain' speaks to them in that way.

I know now one thing only matters in these days... true love... love and love alone.