Joni Mitchell Quotes

Love is touching souls.

People were very protective of me. Overly so. I was in the industry for a long time before I had any idea of what drugs people were doing.

A little lawyer on the tube, he said, its so easy now, anyone can sue.

He's swept with the broom of contempt and the rooms have an empty ring.

Richard got married to a figure skater, and he bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator.

Van Gogh was impulsive.

When you reach that kind of successful pinnacle, it is the nature of the business and the press and everything that they go about tearing you down.

It's life's illusions that I recall, I really don't know life at all

I met a redneck on a Grecian isle who did the Goat Dance very well.

Buddy Holly and the early rock 'n' roll was no lighter than the way I play. It's very minimal.

Fear is like the wilderland - Stepping stones or sinking sand

Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air and feather canyons everywhere, I've looked at clouds that way.

I come from pioneer stock, developers of the West, people who went out into the wilderness and set up home with nothing but a pair of oxen.

Lazy reviewers look up other people's reviews and they write the same thing, so you get people writing crap based on crap.

I know my generation - a lot of them, they're getting old now, and they want to think back fondly, they want to kid themselves. A lot of them think, 'Yeah, we were the best.' That's the kiss of death. That's non-growth. And also that's very bad for the world.

Do you want - do you want - do you want to dance with me baby?

I like to move around. I travel. I've driven across country by myself.

The rock & roll industry is very incestuous, and we have all been close at one time or another. A lot of beautiful music and a lot of beautiful times came from that. A lot of pain, too, because, inevitably, different relationships broke up.

America is in a runaway-train position and dragging all the world with it. It's grotesquely mentally ill.

I could drink a case of you.

Land of snap decisions, land of short attention spans, nothing is savored long enough to really understand.

Musically, I would never run dry. Any time I sit down to an instrument, I could write a song.

All my battles were with male egos. I’m just looking for equality, not to dominate. But I want to be able to control my vision.

I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them.

I liked playing in small clubs. I really liked holding the attention of thirty or forty people. I never liked the roar of the big crowd.

Bob [Dylan] is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.

They used to laugh at me when I refused to ride on all those double decker buses, all because there was no driver on the top.

When I was 19 I went to art school. I had six months of teaching myself to play baritone ukulele under my belt so I was sort of a novice folkie... I was singing folk songs at that time.

I think I would go further into fine arts, I think, if I were to continue.

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.

Sex sells everything and sex kills.

If you see yourself as a kingly type, then you need your serfs and your army and so on around you.

I wrote 'Big Yellow Taxi' on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart this blight on paradise. That's when I sat down and wrote the song.

I hate show business.

I had made all these rules for myself: I'm not writing social commentary, I'm not writing love songs.

All romantics meet the same fate some day. Drunk and cynical and boring someone in some dark cafe.

Keep a good heart. That's the most important thing in life. It's not how much money you make or what you can acquire. The art of it is to keep a good heart.

I always thought the women of song don't get along, and I don't know why that is.

But you know it's hard to tell When you're in the spell if it's wrong or if it's real But you're bound to lose If you let the blues get you scared to feel

I didn't like the sound of people gasping at the mere mention of my name. It horrified me...

I learned from admiration and osmosis.

People used to say nobody can sing my songs but me, they're too personal.

I prefer Christmas, which is everybody's holiday. It's just my nature. I don't like to be zeroed in on en masse.

My life came down to being a granny and watching a lot of television.

An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child.

The pirate he will sink you with a kiss, he'll steal your heart and sail away.

Freedom to me is a luxury of being able to follow the path of the heart, to keep the magic in your life. Freedom is necessary for me in order to create, and if I cannot create I don’t feel alive.