I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.

O‘ What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it’s poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one. And I think that my favorite writers definitely have something musical about what they do, in saying something so relatable and universal and so simple.

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

The people in my songs are all me.

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

I’ve never written a song in my life. It’s all a big hoax.

Writing ‚We Are Never Getting Back Together‘ was one of the most hilarious experiences I have ever had in the studio because it just happened so naturally.

I have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.

When I’m making music, I can hear all the parts, all the instruments. I can hear what it should be.

The waving of a pine tree on the top of a mountain – a magic wand in Nature’s hand – every devout mountaineer knows its power; but the marvelous beauty value of what the Scotch call a breckan in a still dell, what poet has sung this?

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.

I’d been making music that was intended to be like painting, in the sense that it’s environmental, without the customary narrative and episodic quality that music normally has. I called this ‚ambient music.‘ But at the same time I was trying to make visual art become more like music, in that it changed the way that music changes.

I write music every day.

Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.

Most game music is based on loops effectively.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

A poem is a naked person… Some people say that I am a poet.

I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

I can’t make a song for a particular person or demographic. If I love it, I’m gonna do it. I have to perform it for the rest of my life. A song is like a tattoo – you can never get away from it.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

I’m the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that’s horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

At ev’ry word a reputation dies.

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.

My songs have always been frustrating themes, relationships that I’ve had. And now that I’m in love, I expect it to be really happy, or at least there won’t be half as much anger as there was.

Most of the time, songs that I write end up being finished in 30 minutes or less.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.

When I say that basically writing is a hard hustle, I don’t mean that it is a bad life, if one can get away with it. It’s the miracle of miracles to make a living by the typer.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?

On the subject of literary genres, I’ve always felt that my response to poetry is inadequate. I’d love to be the kind of person that drifts off into the garden with a slim volume of Elizabethan verse or a sheaf of haikus, but my passion is story.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

I read poetry to save time.

The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

When I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

My nails are my rhythm section when I’m writing a song all alone. Some day, I may cut an album, just me and my nails.

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

I write some country music. There’s a song called ‚I Hope You Dance.‘ Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.