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

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

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

When I was four, I wrote a song about falling into a black hole.

I went on all over the States, ranting poems to enthusiastic audiences that, the week before, had been equally enthusiastic about lectures on Railway Development or the Modern Turkish Essay.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

When you write a song like ‚Forrest Gump,‘ the subject can’t be androgynous. It requires an unnecessary amount of effort.

I know some people might think it odd – unworthy even – for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people’s poet so I write for the people.

I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.

With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.

The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.

I play a lot of instruments. I write all my own music. I spend hours and hours a day in the studio. I’m a producer. I’m a writer.

I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming from inside. There’s no tricks. It’s honesty with big melodies.

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

One of my most popular songs, ‚Satellites,‘ I paid $300 for that beat on SoundClick.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It’s a natural process.

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

I don’t think a song should be put in a category.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making.

The people in my songs are all me.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

My passion is bringing storylines around and constructing a full body of work rather than just a 16-bar verse.

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

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.

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.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world… to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

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

For some reason, I’m really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.

At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.

Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Every single one of the guys that I’ve written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans.

When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart’s the last part moves, her last, the tongue.

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not – silence is the sharper sword.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.

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

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

Lyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.

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

I don’t think of poetry as a ‚rational‘ activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.