James Taylor Quotations

Music is like a huge release of tension.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Grammys because I don't see the music world as a competitive sport.

That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind.

Once you get that two-way energy thing going, everyone benefits hugely.

I collect hats. That's what you do when you're bald.

Certain things in life are more important than the usual crap that everyone strives for.

The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.

People should watch out for three things: avoid a major addiction, don't get so deeply into debt that it controls your life, and don't start a family before you're ready to settle down.

Being on a boat that's moving through the water, it's so clear. Everything falls into place in terms of what's important and what's not.

I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others.

I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.

I find it a lot healthier for me to be someplace where I can go outside in my bare feet.

You have to choose whether to love yourself or not.

I think people are isolated because of the nature of human consciousness, and they like it when they feel the connection between themselves and someone else.

I believe 100 percent in the power and importance of music.

Television news is now entertainment, and the stories are being written by the people that have a special interest in them.

I don't take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.

Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have made a lot of difference to my audience that I'm as bald as a billiard ball!

A concert is always like a feast day to me.

If you're an addict, it controls your life and your life becomes uncontrollable. It's boring and painful, filling your system with something that makes you stare at your shoes for six hours.

We all have to face pain, and pain makes us grow.

I don't play the kind of music that works in a football stadium.

I'm looking forward to being able to retire from being a public figure and being able to afford to be myself!

Bruce Springsteen's a rock star. Elton John is a rock star. I'm a folk musician. Honestly, I think that's true.

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me. It's not as if I sit down and play 'Fire and Rain' by myself, just to hear it again. But to offer it up... the energy that it somehow summons live takes me right back, and I do get a reconnection to the emotions.

I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about black music, about soul music.

I hate it when they say 'Don't change horses in midstream' ... if your horse can't swim and he's way over his head.

I enjoy selling my music. I don't enjoy selling myself.

I don't reinvent myself in any major way. It seems to be a slow evolution. I go back and visit certain themes that I feel strongly about and resonate with me emotionally.

He doesn't have the same kind of support community that I do in maintaining a career. He feels as though he's lived long enough and done well enough to be of service, and more than anything else that's the way he defines success. It's not so much his business as his work.

Our needs are so big, and our vision is so small. I'd just hate to see the community utilize its waterfront in a way that would preclude jobs.

People have used my songs and guitar style to teach guitar for a long time.

I was a huge Beatles fan. We could talk about who I listened to growing up and what my sources were, but certainly the Beatles were a late, important resource for me, and I just took my guitar and a handful of songs, and I decided, well, I'll just go over and travel around Europe and see what comes of it.

I was backstage when James called me back to the stage again to sing 'How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)' with him. I don't even feel like it was me up there. It was so intense.

When you write a song, it may come from a personal space, but it very seldom actually represents you. It comes out of a sort of mood of melancholy, somehow. It's almost theatrical.

We are part of the community, and we need investigation to be proactive, to look to the outside, to encourage people to come up with bright ideas.

Though 'Fire and Rain' is very personal, for other people it resonates as a sort of commonly held experience... And that's what happens with me. I write things for personal reasons, and then in some cases it... can be a shared experience.

You have to brace yourself for the smell. It is a really bad stench. It is disgusting, absolutely disgusting.

Won't you look down upon me, Jesus. You gotta help me make a stand,

Yes, but it's my life has been wasted, And I have been the fool, To let this manufacturer use my body for a tool, I can ride home in the evening, Staring at my hands, Swearing by my sorrow that a young girl, Ought to stand a better chance, So may I w

We're the only deep-water port in Skagit County. Somehow we don't want to tie it all up with restaurants.

There are a dozen or so songs people are expecting to hear, ... You don't do them all, but you put six or seven of those songs in the set. And you try to vary the arrangement of things that are familiar.

I've seen fire and I've seen rain, I've seen sunny days I thought would never end, I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I always thought I'd see you again

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me.

So we talked about the tune, we talked about the lyric and about how we would divide it up and approach it. There certainly wasn't time to say, 'By the way, do you remember 1965, McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts? What was that all about?'

That one inning killed us; it killed us bad. We just have to step it up in the future and make the easy plays when we have them and not get rattled. One innocent play started it and it kind of snowballed from there. Suddenly we couldn't make a play.

I've always worked all my life and now I need a hand, not a handout. That's why I'm here.

I'm beginning to warm to the prospect of it. I've always liked the idea of other people singing my songs.

Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

The best thing is when you hear somebody take your song and make something great of it.

I tend to like things that I've written recently because it's fresh but then there are things that I think really turned out well. I'd say I'm still pretty proud of Sweet Baby James.

I don't read music. I don't write or read music.

They do need a place to move to, keep that in mind, county commissioners.

It's been a number of years since I worked solo. That's all I used to do, and that's how I started out. So it's nice to get back to that every once in a while.

It won't be long before another day, were gonna have a good time. And no ones gonna take that time away. You can stay as long as you like

Shower the people you love with love.

I don't know much about God. But if everything does originate with God, then certainly songs do as well.

Turn away from your animal kind, try to leave your body, just to live in your mind.

Time will take your money, but money won't buy time.

Music reminds us that the universe loves us

No one can tell me that I'm doing wrong.

['Fire and Rain'] is sort of almost uncomfortably close. Almost confessional. The reason I could write a song like that at that point, and probably couldn't now, is that I didn't have any sense that anyone would hear it. I started writing the song while I was in London...and I was totally unknown.... So I assumed that they would never be heard. I could just write or say anything I wanted. Now I'm very aware, and I have to deal with my stage fright and my anxiety about people examining or judging it. The idea that people will pass judgment on it is not a useful thought.

I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.

If you think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.

It is a process of discovery. It's being quiet enough and undisturbed enough for a period of time so that the songs can begin to sort of peek out, and you begin to have emotional experiences in a musical way.

There'll come a writing phase where you have to defend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.

The SECRET to Love is in OPENING up your Heart

To be a musician, especially a singer-songwriter - well, you don't do that if you have a thriving social life. You do it because there's an element of alienation in your life.

I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.

Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.

Ireland, Italy and Brazil are the most musical places for me. They're extremely musical cultures and anything you pitch they basically catch.

My brother Alex fell in love with rhythm and blues early and gave me a strong dose of it.

It is the most delightful thing that ever happens to me, when I hear something coming out of my guitar and out of my mouth that wasn't there before.

We could never have guessed We were already blessed where we are...

I'm glad that I still have the ability to tour in Europe. I do love it.

All it really needed was the proper point of view. No one's gonna bring me down.

Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King and recognize that there are ties between us, all men and women living on the Earth. Ties of hope and love, sister and brotherhood, that we are bound together in our desire to see the world become a place in which our children can grow free and strong. We are bound together by the task that stands before us and the road that lies ahead. We are bound and we are bound.

I've written a number of songs over the years and it's a big part of my life, this sort of tension between a longing for home and the call for the open road. It's sort of like a tug between two families. I even love to miss my home.

The report falsely asserts that global warming is causing more extreme weather events, more droughts, more record high temperatures, more wildfires, warmer winters, etc., when each and every one of these false assertions is contradicted by objective, verifiable evidence.

To me, very much of what is artistic is people's very creative and inventive ways out of impossible situations.

Try not to try to hard, it's just a lovely ride;)

Creativity is the process that gives life to a new product.

I don't get into heavy political numbers because I don't find them lyrical.

I think there's probably a God-shaped hole in everybody's being. Even if God only exists in people's minds, He's still a force.

Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you gotta do is call, and I'll be there, 'cause you've got a friend.

Without a doubt, the warming of the past 100 years has been a welcome respite from a long and deadly Little Ice Age. The possibility that humans may have contributed to the recent warming does not make it any less welcome.

I don't find the songs; they find me. I just strum my guitar and wait for a lyric to come.

Knowing when to quit is probably a very important thing, but I just am not ready.

I can take criticisms but not compliments.

Never give up, never slow down, never grow old and never ever die young.

I don't build no heathen temples, where the Lord has done laid a hand. There's a well on the hill, let it be.

Don't be sad cause your sun is down, the night doesn't need your sorrow. Don't be sad cause the light is gone, just keep your mind on tomorrow.

I gathered up my sorrows and I sold them all for gold. And I gathered up the gold, and I threw it all away.

Within my heart is carved a sculpture of your love.

Einstein said that he never could understand it all, the planets spinning in space, the smile upon your face.

O, it's enough to be on your way. It's enough just to cover ground. It's enough to be moving on. Home: better build it behind your eyes. Carry it in your heart, Safe among your own.

There's been plenty of adversity, starting the moment he was born. He had a respiratory crisis, and it was touch and go for a week whether he would survive. I think ever since, you can feel this pulse in the guy, an almost physical enthusiasm.

It was like the top of the roof came off the house, .. He had that effect on everyone.

I can't thank you enough for showing up. It's not the same without you.

Quart of whiskey a day for months working hard on a long poem. Wife hiding bottles, myself hiding bottles. Murderous and suicidal. Many hospitalizations, many alibis.