Nas Quotes

A lot of times when songwriters get together and write a song... somebody will come in with a hook and a lot of times they come out with something that sounds a little crafty.

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

I had the lyric 'Chip Don't Go' and a few words, and my wife came in and said that it sounded like a good song. I thought I'd finish writing it up and posting it to YouTube. I didn't realize it was going to take off like it did.

I think all of my songs are either based on personal experience or will be based on personal experience, because I do write a lot of songs prophetically.

There's no way to learn how to write a hit song. There's no formula for it. You just have to have it inside of you.

I'm not sure if the next song I write is going to be about love or a song about a tree.

How does a person create a song? A lot of it is being open to encounter and to be in touch with the miraculous.

Writing songs, that's what gets me going. Not the drugs or the sex or the rock'n'roll behaviour, it's the music.

You know, I've written many of my songs while driving - which is against the law in many cases.

As much as I love performing, nothing juices me up creatively like being in my own studio for an extended period. Songs, ideas, even paintings are pouring out of me. My inspiration and usual subject matter: life.

Most of the time I write my best songs just from feeling a strong emotion, so whether I'm just really angry or really sad or really happy, I immediately sit down at a piano and I begin writing a song.

I would always write lyrics and songs on the piano.

I'm inspired to write songs in many different ways - it can come from a melody, a word or phrase or something I have seen on my travels around the world. It's one of the great bonuses of my job in that I get to meet so many people and experience different cultures and it would be hard not to be inspired.

Morrissey writes wonderful song titles, but sadly he often forgets to write the song.

My creative process involves reading books and magazines, writing outside, and moving around a lot. I like to pace around when I'm writing songs.

The thing about being a songwriter, once you realize you are one, is that to provide ammo, you start to become an observer. ... 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. ... It's a little of Peeping Tom, being a song-writer.

There's nothing like the eureka moment of knocking off a song that didn't exist before - I won't compare it to sex, but it lasts longer.

I've written good love songs when I have been in love and I've written good love songs when I haven't.

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

As long as you continue to have new songs, there's usually some new topic or something to present.

Sometimes in the middle of the night, I wake up with a song in my head, and I have to finish it so I can fall back asleep.

If you can take a piece of life and put it in a song, it's going to be a good song - especially if it's from the heart.

I got a song called 'All That I Got Is You.' I wrote that from the heart.

I wrote 'Show Me the Way' in the morning and wrote 'Baby, I Love Your Way' in the afternoon of the same day. I've been trying to figure out what I ate for breakfast that morning ever since!

That's the way I've always been, between the albums: For two- or three-year gaps I wouldn't pick up a guitar. And when I don't pick up a guitar for a year or two, that's when the songs fall out.