Lucinda Williams Quotes

I write in my sleep. I don't know how, but I'll work on a song, go to sleep and it's finished when I wake up.

Writing every song is a little journey. The first note has to lift you.

It's like a dream sometimes, a song just pops into your head and you can't tell if it's something you heard or it's new and you got to write it down.

What happens is, especially when I was writing for my band, Creedence, and it's the way I write now, I go into "guitar lick" mode. When I do, it sort of leads into a real song. I'd say to myself, your songwriting is coming up with a guitar lick, and the rest is easy!

When I'm writing [songs], some days the pen just goes. I'm not in charge and I'm almost listening outside of it. That's when I realize that we all have to start looking at life as a gift. It's like listening to a color and believing that these colors have soul mates and once you get them all together the painting is complete.

All of a sudden there's a song - there in your hotel room playing your guitar - and you write it, and two or three years later it will come true. It keeps you on your toes.

I would always write lyrics and songs on the piano.

It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born.

I don't write songs, songs write me.

I have this really beautiful Martin guitar, and it just kind of writes songs for me.

A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true. They're like strange countries that you have to enter.

When I get an idea for a song it would gel in my mind for weeks or months, and then one day just like that, Ill write it.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

I usually dream of melodies. When I wake up I have them in my head. I usually come up with things in the middle of the night because that's when my mind is the quietest. I always have my tape recorder, pen and pad by my bed just in case.

There's a saying, 'It's easy to write songs, but very difficult to write great songs.' I'm going through that right now.

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've always loved both writing and songwriting. The journey is fascinating to me.

As a songwriter, I go into the studio, and I just try to write a great song.

I'm just writing less of my own music lately - I go in and out of phases a lot. Sometimes there are these accidents that just sort of happen, that are kind of waiting around the corner. I guess Modest Mouse was one of them.

You never forget where you were when you write a song; it's a very proper memory, so I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing for each track. It was like going into a time machine.

The music usually occurs to me as a complete sound, and then I have developed the skill of being able to translate that into a fully realized song.

And religious music and the sort of symbolism of it and everything. But I had this idea. Actually, I sort of dreamt it. I woke up - just before waking up one morning, I sort of dreamt this song or the idea of it and the first little bit of it. And I jumped out of bed and I thought, well, you're still asleep. You're going to forget this in a minute - you know, like you do when you've had a dream.

I can only write songs when somebody gives me some water to swim in. Otherwise, I'm a fish on the beach.

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.

Sometimes a song can take up to a year to write, and because I waited that year and waited to work on it that day, it came up that extra 50 percent.