James Taylor Quotes

There'll come a writing phase where you have to defend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.

I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.

That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind.

I believe 100 percent in the power and importance of music.

Something I do love about social media is how you can expand your idea. You can make an extension of your art as opposed to just using it for promotion.

Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.

Somehow it helps just to take something that's internal and externalize it, to see it in front of you.

What I've always done as an entertainer is try to come up with things that people will find interesting, or compelling, or humorous.

It is a process of discovery. It's being quiet enough and undisturbed enough for a period of time so that the songs can begin to sort of peek out, and you begin to have emotional experiences in a musical way.

Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King and recognize that there are ties between us, all men and women living on the Earth. Ties of hope and love, sister and brotherhood, that we are bound together in our desire to see the world become a place in which our children can grow free and strong. We are bound together by the task that stands before us and the road that lies ahead. We are bound and we are bound.

I collect hats. That's what you do when you're bald.

Time will take your money, but money won't buy time.

In the beginning, there was a kind of energy that - like an urgency to express myself, and the songs just couldn't be held in. But I think it changes, the nature of how that - what that energy is. And I need to court the muse in a much more serious way.

It is the most delightful thing that ever happens to me, when I hear something coming out of my guitar and out of my mouth that wasn't there before.

Bruce Springsteen's a rock star. Elton John is a rock star. I'm a folk musician. Honestly, I think that's true.

When I cleaned up some 17 odd years ago, I felt terrible for about six months. The only thing that gave me any real relief was strenuous physical activity.

Music is my living. I enjoy selling my music.

Americans work a long away ahead of themselves because of the size of the place. To make any impact at all you have to promote yourself with live performances ages before a release.

Knowing when to quit is probably a very important thing, but I just am not ready.

It's a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you're being autobiographical.

But it's only after you've played it on the road 20 or 30 times that it becomes really finished and polished...and you realize what it means, and you get the phrasing right.

Won't you look down upon me Jesus, you've got to help me make a stand. You just got to see me through another day.

I'm glad that I still have the ability to tour in Europe. I do love it.

You can bring your enemies to their knees with the possible exception of the North Vietnamese.

If you feel like singing along, don't.

I don't know much about God. But if everything does originate with God, then certainly songs do as well.

The Beatles were a phenomenon, but they were also ordinary blokes like anyone else. I was lucky enough to see that side.

To me, very much of what is artistic is people's very creative and inventive ways out of impossible situations.

I think that we're all totally isolated beings and always will be.

Television news is now entertainment, and the stories are being written by the people that have a special interest in them.

I had a very moral upbringing, and spiritual in a sort of not very specific way.

Photographers and reporters are mostly after me. They want to know what I read and what I'm like and I don't really know myself, so how can I tell them?

Never give up, never slow down, never grow old and never ever die young.

There's a lot more information at hand and sometimes there's information overload and we become desensitized to it, so things start to mean less.

Just nine lucky soldiers had come through the night, half of them wounded and barely alive. Just nine out of twenty was headed for home, with eleven stories to tell.

All it really needed was the proper point of view. No one's gonna bring me down.

I have a studio in a barn at home - we rehearse there, we film there and we record there. It's fun to hang out with my guys and see what comes out next.

It's true that I can write a song and not really be sure what the meaning of it is.

I told you that I love you, I was only telling a lie. I'll be long gone come the crack of dawn and I believe the word is goodbye.

Einstein said that he never could understand it all, the planets spinning in space, the smile upon your face.

I know there are people who don't like their audience or like the experience of being recognized or celebrated, but my audience has been very good - they don't bother me and when they do contact me it's usually on the nicest possible terms.

There ain't no doubt in my mind that love is the finest thing around

I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.

Things started to get out of control when I began reading that I was a superstar.

In the old days gigging was everything. The whole of life was about gigs. Everything was about waiting for the gig and then doing the gig and going nuts and then afterwards the party and all the stuff that goes with it. And then that party continues through your twenties and thirties. I'm now 51, and it's still very much in my blood, but I'm really hard pushed... the gig is the party for me now.

It won't be long before another day, were gonna have a good time. And no ones gonna take that time away. You can stay as long as you like

I can take criticisms but not compliments.

Maybe my biggest aim is to bring a sense of that old mystery of rock 'n' roll into the new age of today's instantaneous and fast world.