Loudon Wainwright III Quotes

I don't write a great song every day. I don't write a great song every couple weeks. It comes in such random times.

For years and years, I would sit in my studio, and I wouldn't have any inspiration. I'd write one or two songs a year.

I get so many ideas for songs, but I'm so seldom disciplined enough to sit down and crank them out.

Some of the best songs I've written, I've written in 10 minutes.

Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work.

When the ideas are coming, I don't stop until the ideas stop because that train doesn't come along all the time.

The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.

The muse holds no appointments. You can never call on it. I don't understand people who get up at 9 o'clock in the morning, put on the coffee and sit down to write.

One reason I don't suffer Writer's Block is that I don't wait on the muse, I summon it at need.

People often ask writers where they get their inspiration, and for me, the short answer is that I haven't a clue; I'm just grateful that I get them.

The problem as you get older is, from my perspective, after a certain amount of songs, you tend to start writing something and then you stop and say, 'Wait, I think I've written that before.'

When people think of someone being prolific, it's like, 'He's got a vault with 5,000 songs in it,' or something, but I just kind of pick them out of the air when they float by.

There's no such thing as writer's block. I'm brilliant all the time every day. It never stops.

Whenever I finish a movie, I usually go through a period where I think I'll never have another idea. And then, somehow, you get another idea.

I've got so much material; like, it feels as if every day I'm coming up with so many riffs.

I never get writer's block, but I do have days where I crawl under the duvet.

I feel like I spend most of my time in a state of writer's block! When things do come out, they come out quickly.

I've been pretty lucky in that I'm not a big writer's block kind of person.

I've learnt that the muse is like an angry girlfriend. If she comes knocking you better be home because if you're not, she doesn't leave a note saying pick up after 3 P. M. from the post office. The gift she had is gone forever.

I get a lot of my songwriting done while driving around Nashville - sometimes it comes to me that way.

Throughout my life, there's just periods when I write and periods when I don't. I don't feel like anything's really blocked. It's just not where things are at right now, and it's just a matter of time until there's something going on where I feel compelled to write.

I have, like, 'Finders Keepers' fever now! Sometimes I go in the studio, and I'm like, 'That worked so well, and I wrote it in 45 minutes, so if I try wearing the same outfit and playing on the same piano, it'll happen again.'

I called the guys from Promise of the Real, whom I've been playing with, and they were all on the road. Right after I hung up the phone, I wrote another song and started writing another, and I'm going, "Hey, I can't wait. I should be doing this now!" My experience tells me that when it's there, it's there, and you can't make it wait. So I got Jimmy Keltner and Paul Bushnell, two good guys, and went in and did this record ["Peace Trail"].

Out of my entire annual output of songs, perhaps two, or at the most three, came as a result of inspiration. We can never rely on inspiration. When we most want it, it does not come.

Song ideas have come to me in the middle of interviews, in the shower, or while I'm writing another song.