Joni Mitchell Quotes

We'll laugh and toast to nothing, and smash our empty glasses down.

Lord, there's danger in this land, you get witch hunts and wars when church and state hold hands.

I'm a painter first, and a musician second.

It's in my stars to invent; I was born on Madame Curie's birthday. I have this need for originals, for innovation. That's why I like Charlie Parker.

You wake up one day and suddenly realize that your youth is behind you, even though you're still young at heart.

You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining.

The Blue album, there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there, either.

I like my freedom. I like to do my own grocery shopping. People do recognize you. They are kind of shocked. Some people like it. It makes them feel at ease. It confirms their hopes that you are in fact similar to them.

The bands and the roadies, love 'em and leave 'em. It's pleasure to try 'em, but trouble to keep 'em.

They won't give peace a chance, that's just a dream some of us had

When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark.

I used to be monastic, almost. Now I'm like a Tibetan that has discovered hamburgers and television. I'm catching up on Americana.

My family could only afford to get me the box of eight Crayola crayons, but I craved the one with all 24 colours. I wanted magenta and turquoise and silver and gold.

I paint my joy and I sing my sorrow.

people will tell you were they have gone, they'll tell you where to go, but until you get there for yourself you never really know.

During times like these, the wise are influential.

Everyone I know has attention deficit, and they say it with great pride. It's a bad time to be right.

In some ways, my gift for music and writing was born out of tragedy, really, and loss.

We are stardust, we are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

I'm not a kiss-and-teller. I never named names.

We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn't like. It has no resemblance to democracy.

I'm drinking champagne, got the head phones up high, can't numb you out.

So many things I would have done, but clouds got in my way.

I create by feeling rather than by intellectualizing.

I certainly don't want to be an angry old artist.

The most important thing is to write in your own blood. I bare intimate feelings because people should know how other people feel.

I don't know who I am but you know, life is for learning.

I still believe in the power of the word, that words inspire.

I didn't think I had much of a following in the South. I thought I was anonymous down there so I kept to the South. But I found in certain pockets that I was quite recognizable and I just hit a wig store.

And the seasons they go 'round and 'round And the painted ponies go up and down We're captive on the carousel of time We can't return we can only look behind From where we came And go round and round and round In the circle game.

Because I'm so busy and because I think of myself as a painter, I desperately guard the time that I have to paint. And sometimes I'm irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep.

Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone.

I do have this reputation for being a serious person.

My name had gone stale, and no matter how progressive I got, it was my time to die.

In a pure anonymous encounter you find a world alive and full of character. In New York, the street adventures are incredible. There are a thousand stories in a single block. You see the stories in people's faces. You hear the songs immediately. Here, in Los Angeles, there are fewer characters because they are all inside automobiles.

Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980.

My first four albums covered the usual youth problems - looking for love in all the wrong places - while the next five are basically about being in your 30s.

To enjoy my music, you need depth and emotionality.

You feed it all your woes, the ghostly garden grows.

Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.

I'm your biggest fan, California, I'm coming home

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

I see bodies as individual things.

Just before our love got lost you said "I am as constant as a northern star" And I said, constantly in the darkness, Where's that at? If you want me I'll be in the bar.

I like my freedom. I like to do my own grocery shopping.

Innocence is drowned in anarchy. The best lack conviction given time to think, and the worst are full of passion without mercy.

Love is a very hard feeling to keep alive. It's a very fragile plant.

My goal as a writer is more to comfort than to disturb.