Joni Mitchell Quotes

I'm not a pitiable creature. It's just that I suffer very eloquently.

Everybody's saying hell's the hippest way to go. Well, I don't think so, but I'm gonna take a look around it though.

Applause, applause, life is our cause.

They paved paradise and put up a parkin lot With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you got till it's gone

I am as constant as a northern star

The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music.

Edith Piaf knocked my socks off when I was 8, but I didn't know what she was singing about.

When I came to California, it was the mecca of the world. Every young person on the planet wanted to be here.

I love you when I forget about me.

My childhood was very difficult. I had every childhood disease and then some, but my parents didnt mollycoddle me. They left me to fight those battles on my own. I guess that was very Canadian, very stoic. But its good. I had to become a warrior. I had to give up hope and find a substitute for hope that would be far more stable.

I'm irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep.

I couldn't see passion as a bad thing.

I wish I had a river I could skate away on?

I never really wanted to be a star. I didn't like entering a room with all eyes on me. I still don't really like the attention of a birthday party.

Sunlight will renew your pride.

We managed to put together a compilation that had some creativity to it. In the meantime I was listening to the free radio stations and I noticed that during their war coverage they were playing these songs born out of the Vietnam War that were all critical of the soldiers.

All I really, really want our love to do is to bring out the best in me and in you too.

Does the moon play only silver when it strums the galaxy?

I sang in art school, just to get money to smoke.

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I knew there was milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges, too.

When the spirit of child's play enters into the creative process, it's a wonderful force and something to be nurtured.

The Hollywood sirens are shrieking, while down some search lit alley runs some lost belief.

I have lost my credibility as a hit maker because of these side excursions into other branches of music; by not being consistent. Consistency seems to be all-important.

I can't remember anything I ever wrote.

The Beginning of Survival is my best album. I am very proud of it, and I am surprised at it, too. I thought some of Travelogue was a little heavy, but I don't think this is heavy.

I assume there must be some kind of genetic thrust. My two grandmothers were very different, but both of them were frustrated musicians.

There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said.

Something's lost, but something's gained, in living everyday.

At the point where I'm trying to force something and it's not happening, and I'm getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go and pick up the guitar.

Daydreamin' drugs the pain of living.

But now old friends are acting strange They shake their heads, they say I've changed Well something's lost, but something's gained In living every day

My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species.

Some people are upset to see you doing ordinary things. Those people, if they were a celebrity, they would have an entourage.

You've got to keep the child alive; you can't create without it.

you dont know what you got till its gone

Heart and humor and humility, he said will lighten up your heavy load.

I am a woman of heart and mind, looking for affection and respect, a little passion.

I thrive on change. That's probably why my chord changes are weird, because chords depict emotions. They'll be going along on one key and I'll drop off a cliff, and suddenly they will go into a whole other key signature. That will drive some people crazy, but that's how my life is.

My husband had an education. He had a degree in Literature. I married into a camp of literary types.

When I think of your kisses my mind see-saws.

I'd had a rough childhood.

They'll crucify you for staying the same, and they'll crucify you for change. I'd rather be crucified for changing.

If I'm censoring for anyone, it's for my parents. They are very old-fashioned and moral people. They still don't understand me that well.

Ask anyone in America where the craziest people live and they'll tell you California. Ask anyone in California where the craziest people live and they'll say Los Angeles. Ask anyone in Los Angeles where the craziest people live and they'll tell you Hollywood. Ask anyone in Hollywood where the craziest people live and they'll say Laurel Canyon. And ask anyone in Laurel Canyon where the craziest people live and they'll say Lookout Mountain. So I bought a house on Lookout Mountain.

Rachmaninoff made a musician out of me. His 'Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini' was the piece that sent me into raptures. It spoke to me. To me, it was a tender entreaty for the misunderstood.

I believe that I am male and I am female.

How does a person create a song? A lot of it is being open to encounter and to be in touch with the miraculous.

He saw my complications and he mirrored me back simplified, and we laughed how our perfect world would always be denied.