Chris Thile Quotes

For people who write songs, it's a gift you're given. You become good at the craft, but you're given the gift.

I'm not musically inclined. It blows my mind that people can write music. I don't have that talent; I look up to the people that do.

I really don't think I have that much of the gift; I have a little bit, but I wish I were Schubert or Chopin or Beethoven, though Beethoven had a very difficult time writing melody, too.

Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability.

I've always idolized people who can write songs.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.

I want to be the most melodic artist. 'His music ability, the way he write, his creativity is undeniable.' I want people to say that about me.

I've only written 30 songs or something. Dylan's written over 500 songs. There's no comparison. He's the Shakespeare of rock 'n' roll and popular music.

I don't know anyone who sits down to write a song hit except Irving Berlin. He can't help writing hits.

I've been writing and composing songs since I was 5 years old.

As a songwriter, you try your best to write a good song, and you like nothing better than hearing a good song. It's easy to admire a great song, and you want to share out of enthusiasm.

The ability to make music is a gift that you're born with; it's not something you can learn.

One can be a great poet and be politically stupid.

Genius is a word too often tossed around in musical circles.

I have been fighting writing songs for a long time. People keep telling me I should write, and other writers have offered to write with me, and to be honest, it's not something I've ever really had a passion for - plus I wasn't sure I had the talent to do it!

Bob Dylan has a way with words that simply blows me away. When he forgets his lyrics he just makes up new ones on the spot, that is what I called talented!

It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.

I still don't know if I can write songs. I don't think anyone ever knows if they can write songs.

The writers that I aspire to, like Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman, they'll tell you that the work gets harder, not easier. And they set that bar for us where we're always striving to do something better than the last time, whether it's the next song or just the next line.

I didn't write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn't.

I have a very strange melodic gift: melodies come to me effortlessly.

I was one of those guys, you know, playing and singing, and there was no reason for me to write a song, because there were so many beautiful songs out. And Bob Dylan was always the ultimate songwriter, and nobody could ever write a song as good as him, and nobody ever has written a song as good as him.

Anybody can put things together that belong together. to put things together that don't go together, and make it work, that takes genius like Mozart's. Yet he is presented in the play Amadeus as a kind of silly boy whom the gods loved.

It's a gift that I have and I became good at it. When I heard my first song I didn't even know that I could write songs.