Joni Mitchell Quotes

I lost my daughter at 21. I had to give her up because I was broke, no place to take her, no money to take her. That was very traumatic.

Because Elvis gave 'em cars, you think I'm cheap.

The thing that started me painting originally was seeing Bambi when I was about nine. I was incredibly disturbed by the forest fire that killed Bambi's mother, and that distress gave me the impulse to create something, as a way of dealing with it.

Fame is a series of misunderstandin gs surrounding a name.

All the news of home you read, more about the war and of bloody changes.

Chase away the demons, and they will take the angels with them.

The only thing I have to give to make you smile, to win you with, are all the mornings still to live.

I learned a woman is never an old woman.

Ira Gershwin, shame on him. I mean, some of the writing.

Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees, please.

I'm a very analytical person, a somewhat introspective person; that's the nature of the work I do.

An artist needs a certain amount of turmoil and confusion.

I came through folk music simply because it was easy to get into it.

A few drinks later you're not so choosy when the closing lights strip off the shadows on this strange new flesh you've found.

Paul Simon started piling up a lot of words, more than the bar could handle, and I stopped!

I conceived in art college at the age of 20, near the end of term.

I met a woman She had a mouth like yours She knew your life She knew your devils and your deeds And she said "Go to him, stay with him if you can But be prepared to bleed

I don't like to make fluffy little songs, but now I want to make some light songs.

I get the same charge from juxtaposition of colors as I do from juxtaposition of chords.

When I felt that fame - people were nosing me out - well, I moved on. I used traveling names; wigs if necessary.

I heard someone from the music business saying they are no longer looking for talent, they want people with a certain look and a willingness to cooperate. I thought, that's interesting, because I believe a total unwillingness to cooperate is what is necessary to be an artist — not for perverse reasons, but to protect your vision. The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music. That's why I spend my time now painting.

I was young for my age. Not as naïve as they expected. I don't know why I seem to bring that out in people.

Some turn to Jesus and some turn to heroin.

I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejected as well as movements that happened later.

That's one thing that's always, like, been a difference between, like, the performing arts, and being a painter, you know. A painter does a painting, and he paints it, and that's it, you know. He has the joy of creating it, it hangs on a wall, and somebody buys it, and maybe somebody buys it again, or maybe nobody buys it and it sits up in a loft somewhere until he dies. But he never, you know, nobody ever, nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Paint a Starry Night again, man!' You know? He painted it and that was it.

I got in before SoHo was SoHo. It was just Little Italy when I was in there. It's still off the touristy track. It's just away from the Saturday action, the crowds and everything. It's too expensive. It's insane. You've got to be a billionaire to live on Manhattan now.

White rhythm is waltzes, marches, and the polka. In Africa, rhythm is used for a celebratory groove, but white rhythm doesn't have such an enormous vocabulary of spirits. It's basically militant.

Back then, I didn't have a big organization around me. I was just a kid with a guitar, traveling around. My responsibility basically was to the art, and I had extra time on my hands. There is no extra time now. There isn't enough time.

We're captive on the carousel of time, we can't return we can only look behind.

Unlike some of my peers, I haven't really hit a writer's block. When I hit a block I just paint, which is an old crop rotation trick.

No one likes to have less than they had before. That's the nature of the human animal.

What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song.

Rolling Stone hates me. They must have an editorial policy to do me in for many years.

Once I got the open tunings for some reason, I began to get the harmonic sophistication that I heard that my musical fountain inside was excited by. Once I got some interesting chords to play with, my writing began to come.

I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead.

The songwriting was almost like something I did while I was waiting for my daughter to come back.

Won't you stay We'll put on the day And we'll talk in present tenses

Let light hearts remake us.

I see the entire world as Eden, and every time you take an inch of it away, you must do so with respect.

I have one piece of music, since 1997, and I don't see it having lyrics. Where does it go in this world? So I haven't recorded it.

Heaven's full of astronauts and the Lord's on death row.

Not to dismiss Gershwin, but Gershwin is the chip; Ellington was the block.

The coming of the kids hasn't come out in my art yet.

I get the urge for going/But I never seem to go.

The God of the Old Testament is the depiction of evil.

You have this mounting aggressive ignorance with the rabbit's foot of their particular religion. You don't really have any kind of spiritual law, just a kind of a rabid mental illness. The songs are a little slice of life.

I've got 50 different tunings in the guitar.

I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?