Songwriter Quotes

“If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with.”
― Michael Jackson

“You read and write and sing and experience, thinking that one day these things will build the character you admire to live as. You love and lose and bleed best you can, to the extreme, hoping that one day the world will read you like the poem you want to be.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“So many people will tell you ”no”, and you need to find something you believe in so hard that you just smile and tell them ”watch me”. Learn to take rejection as motivation to prove people wrong. Be unstoppable. Refuse to give up, no matter what. It’s the best skill you can ever learn.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“I want to learn how to speak to anyone at any time and make us both feel a little bit better, lighter, richer, with no commitments of ever meeting again. I want to learn how to stand wherever with whoever and still feel stable. I want to learn how to unlock the locks to our minds, my mind, so that when I hear opinions or views that don’t match up with mine, I can still listen and understand. I want to burn up lifeless habits of following maps and to-do lists, concentrated liquids to burn my mind and throat
and I want to go back to the way nature shaped me. I want to learn to go on well with whatever I have in my hands at the moment
in a natural state of mind,
certain like the sea.

I will find comfort in the rhythm of the sea.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“I am a complicated person with a simple life and I am the reason for everything that ever happened to me.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“I’m learning persistence and the closing of doors, the way the seasons come and go as I keep walking on these roads, back and forth, to find myself in new time zones, new arms with new phrases and new goals. And it hurts to become, hurts to find out about the poverty and gaps, the widow and the leavers. It hurts to accept that it hurts and it hurts to learn how easy it is for people to not need other people. Or how easy it is to need other people but that you can never build a home in someone’s arms because they will let go one day and you must build your own.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“I was free with every road as my home. No limitations and no commitments. But then summer passed and winter came and I fell short for safety. I fell for its spell, slowly humming me to sleep, because I was tired and small, too weak to take or handle those opinions and views, attacking me from every angle. Against my art, against my self, against my very way of living. I collected my thoughts, my few possessions and built isolated walls around my values and character. I protected my own definition of beauty and success like a treasure at the bottom of the sea, for no one saw what I saw, or felt the same as I did, and so I wanted to keep to myself.
You hide to protect yourself.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“It's the smell of him in the bathroom, all I need to get ready for the day. Watching him get dressed, and the sound in the kitchen; a slow hum of a song and his movements, picking things to eat. The way I could observe him, for hours, just go on with his day – or as he sleeps – simply breathing in and out, in and out, and it's like the hymn that sings me to peace.
I know the world is still out there and I know I'm not yet friendly to its pace, but as long as I know him with me, here, there, somewhere – us – I know I have a chance.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“... and I realise the only way to tell the others
is through the way my voice can take these broken words
and turn it into music.
Turn it into poetry.
And I sing to make myself come alive,
but also for you,
because I’d like this to mean something.
To not disappear with the dark I will enter one day
and so now I will tell.
If not for you, then for my own heart,
because it tells me to,
and I'm learning to listen.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“She's got everything she needs; she's an artist, she don't look back.”
― Bob Dylan, Lyrics, 1962-1985

“I became an artist because I wanted to be an active participant in the conversation about art.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“You have to believe that your voice can mean something. You have to believe that what you do matters. And you have to keep going even on days you can't find that belief. If you can't do it for yourself, you do it for all the other young souls who need to be shown that things are possible. That they too can do that thing they dream of. You do it despite the doubts and the struggles. You do it because it's what you came here to do.
That's what makes an artist.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“Time is always new, for dreams to come true
Destiny is yours, to do what you do
Change is different, but only for awhile
Free will it always, brings in a whole new style
Competition makes, the fight all worth your while”
― Marie Helen Abramyan

“Increasing the volume does not improve the quality of a bad song.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Giving all you have will leave you with nothing to lose.”
― Brandon Jenner

“My parents never pushed me towards music. I feel like, growing up in a musical household and always being surrounded by it, I was always kind of a performer child. I remember my parents would have guests over, and they would bring their kids, and I would make sure that we were ready to put a show on.”
― Dua Lipa

“You shine bright, in the night
Like a star, lit so bright
It's your story right now
Say it loud, say it proud
It's your glory right now
So stand up, take a bow”
― Marie Helen Abramyan

“There really is no happy place; it's all about your mindset. However, if I was to choose a place which contributes to my well-being, it would be the recording studio – no contest. There is something magical about people coming together to share ideas, pieces of themselves, and where the song can take you. Within those walls, music is unpredictable... a wildcard... like dreaming in sound.”
― Miranda Easten

“Songs are strange things. Little notes like that. If they stick, they stick. With most of the songs I've ever written, quite honestly, I've felt there's an enormous gap here, waiting to be filled; this song should have been written hundred of years ago. How did nobody pick up on that little space? Half the time you're looking for gaps that other people haven't done.”
― Keith Richards, Life

“I always thought that's what songs are really about; you're not supposed to be singing songs about hiding things. And when my voice got better and stronger, I was able to communicate that raw feeling, and so I wrote more tender songs, love songs, if you like. [...] Composing a song like that, in front of a mike, is like holding on to a friend in a way. [...] I'm not agonizing for days with poems and shit. And what I find fascinating about it is that when you're up there on the microphone and say, OK, let's go, something comes out that you wouldn't have dreamt of. Then within a millisecond you've got to come up with something else that adds to what you've just said. It's kind of jousting with yourself. And suddenly you've got something going and there's a framework to work with.”
― Keith Richards, Life

“I believe in peace.
I believe in people.
I'll believe in you,
If you believe in me too.
Give all you can,
Then nothing can be taken from you.
I believe in love.
I believe it's simple.
Listen to your heart:
Everyone is equal.
Giving all you have
Will leave you with nothing to lose.”
― Brandon Jenner

“Like Gil, Brian had been raised as an only child by strong women. "It shaped our views of ourselves. We considered ourselves loners, on the outside of society," said Jackson. And the two of them often preferred being alone to being around other people.”
― Marcus Baram, Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man

“In a city that attracted protesters, organizers, and activists of every variety, debating issues across the political spectrum and with a huge population of black people, the messages in his lyrics were received with enthusiasm. “This was Chocolate City. People in DC were pretty sophisticated and they liked his political wit, and I think he liked speaking truth to power in the heart of the government.”
― Marcus Baram, Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man

“Write this play like a composer. I’ve always said that the best members of this troupe came from musicals, and I stand by that. To do what we do, you gotta be able to hear the music—even when it isn’t there.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, Death Troupe

“A bad song gives music a bad name.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“It's totally subconscious, unconscious or whatever. The radar is on whether you know it or not. You cannot switch it off. You hear this piece of conversation from across the room, "I just can't stand you anymore" ... That's a song. It just flows in. And also the other thing about being a songwriter, when you realize you are one, is that to provide ammo, you start to become an observer, you start to distance yourself. You're constantly on the alert. That faculty gets trained in you over the years, observing people, how they react to one another. Which, in a way, makes you weirdly distant. You shouldn't really be doing it. It's a little of Peeping Tom to be a songwriter. You start looking round, and everything's a subject for a song.”
― Keith Richards, Life

“Give all you can. Then nothing can be taken from you.”
― Brandon Jenner

“I love and enjoy writing song lyric’s because you hear your words over and over again while you read a book only once or twice!”
― Lily Amis

“Poetry is my pharmaceutical.”
― Janna Cachola

“You can't feed me to the wolves. They come when I call...”
― Holly Knight, I Am the Warrior: My Crazy Life Writing the Hits and Rocking the MTV Eighties