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

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

It’s a rule to give all, and it can make the difference if you work more. If you don’t have to give all, and you still win, what’s this?

Strangely, some songs you really don’t want to write.

Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last.

To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

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

A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.

I get so excited when a song I wrote that’s very personal to me goes No. 1 and I look down and see people singing the words back to me.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

It is no use saying, ‚We are doing our best.‘ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.

Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.

If I’d just tried for them dinky singles I could’ve batted around .600.

Every man who has at last succeeded, after long effort, in calling up the divinity which lies hidden in a woman’s heart, is startled to find that he must obey the God he summoned.

My brother had written ‚Ocean Eyes,‘ and we recorded it, basing all of the production around contemporary and lyrical dance. I think of most songs that way – if you can’t dance to a song, it’s not a song.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

It doesn’t bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs – because at least they’re looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.

I’m wallowing in the whole idea of just being a guy out there with a band, with songs. It’s a real enjoyment.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

I’d like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap – and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and ‚Heart Shaped Box‘ and stuff on ‚In Utero‘ just happened that way.

Life can be boring unless you put some effort into it.

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

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

I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing music, into searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.

Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.

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.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

Producing all my own songs and refusing to go to the hot producer. That’s the biggest risk I’ve taken so far.

I wrote a song with Ed Sheeran that was kind of spontaneous.

When I first started making ambient music, I was setting up systems using synthesizers that generated pulses more or less randomly. The end result is a kind of music that continuously changes. Of course, until computers came along, all I could actually present of that work was a piece of its output.

When I was writing the Destiny’s Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn’t know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

What you put into life is what you get out of it.

Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth.

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.

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you’re sort of writing the same song over and over again.

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.

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

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

We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.

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.

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.

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

The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.

I usually write lyrics first, and then when I get home or close to any kind of instrument, I usually make a melody for those lyrics.

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends, or family.

If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.

If a man does his best, what else is there?

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

Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.