There's a lot of sub-conscious stuff you may write but you don't then suddenly sit down and take out your analytical books and say: I'm determined to find out where this came from. You'd probably be wrong anyway.
Van MorrisonI learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice.
Van MorrisonI just wanted to stop and try to get some perspective. [ A Period of Transition] it was just a matter of wanting to review the whole thing...to try and get some relationship to what I was doing.
Van MorrisonJ.P. Donleavy - now he's one writer I am consistent with. He's written books that I can definitely connect with. He has amazing insights which other people missed out on. Even with his descriptions of Northern Ireland.
Van MorrisonYou have to remember that writing those sorta songs is not reality, it's more like trance, dream, y'know, like dreamwork. The mythical thing can enter the creating but there's the mythical place and the real place. And there's both...I get it between waking and sleeping. Or, when I'm doing something else. I don't sit down and think I'm gonna write about subject X or subject Y. I could be doing something and an impression comes in from outside and the song emerges out of that. It's never thought about or contrived.
Van Morrison