Carly Simon Quotes

Keith Richards has some sort of quote that says 'it takes two people to write a song,' and I'm of that school of thought, too.

Sometimes I start with lyrics - rarely - but sometimes I might have an idea for some lyrics that I wanna say. I write them down and figure out how to use that in a melody to write a song.

If I write songs and I think they sound good, then that's it. That's what I do. I'm not a technical musician, which is fine for rock and roll.

The song could start with a riff that I base the song around. Or a chord progression or a melody I have, I just write a story about it. Lyric-wise, it's cool to have someone else's input too.

I don't sit down to write a song, per se.

I know already the music I will write. But the words? I have not yet decided.

We all write the music, and then Mark and Tom write the lyrics.

Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.

People don't stress enough that when they're writing lyrics, they are writing.

I don't spend afternoons practicing my guitar to get better. I do read, though, to get inspiration for my lyrics.

I write songs on guitar and that's about how good of a guitar player I am. I can write songs on it.

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.

I can put some chords together and maybe write a song, but I'm learning every day. And that's the fun part.

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

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.

We write so many songs, it is difficult to narrow them down.

It was really hard to find people to come over and play guitar and sing and write songs together. So that turned me into a songwriter that way, just so I could be able to play with other people.

I never stopped writing music, I just stopped writing songs. I've been writing music continually ever since the last album of original tunes, "River Of Dreams" in '93.

Writing songs always trumps whatever else was on the schedule, it really is the most important and can be so fickle, you have to grab it when it's there.

When I write a song it's always from the point of view: makes the song the best it can be.

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.

Songwriting is best. It's the hardest ... finest ... tightest. It also requires the most discipline.

With writing music and writing songs and recording music and coming up with stuff, you need to kind of reengage that kind of inner child to come up with interesting perceptions.

I've been writing a lot of songs in twos, songs that are like twins in my mind.

I'd hear a tune in my head and the words would come. And then, very suddenly it just stopped. It seemed too stilted to try and learn how to write a song, to go to round robins and to learn things from other people on how to write a song. So I just stopped and did other things.