James Taylor famous quotes

I don't take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.
-- James Taylor

#Self Esteem #Thinking #Suffering

My brother Alex fell in love with rhythm and blues early and gave me a strong dose of it.
-- James Taylor

#Strong #Brother #Alex

It won't be long before another day, were gonna have a good time. And no ones gonna take that time away. You can stay as long as you like
-- James Taylor

#Long #Another Day #Good Times

In the beginning, there was a kind of energy that - like an urgency to express myself, and the songs just couldn't be held in. But I think it changes, the nature of how that - what that energy is. And I need to court the muse in a much more serious way.
-- James Taylor

#Song #Thinking #Energy

I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others.
-- James Taylor

#Music #Stars #Pain

I'm always making music. I'm constantly making little musical recordings on my phone or on a little voice recorder I carry with me so I can remember these little pieces of music that eventually becomes songs.
-- James Taylor

#Song #Phones #Voice

The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.
-- James Taylor

#Time #Secret #Musician

I've written a number of songs over the years and it's a big part of my life, this sort of tension between a longing for home and the call for the open road. It's sort of like a tug between two families. I even love to miss my home.
-- James Taylor

#Song #Home #Years

To me, very much of what is artistic is people's very creative and inventive ways out of impossible situations.
-- James Taylor

#People #Creative #Way

I'm grateful to my audience, that there are people who will buy a ticket and come and see us play and who essentially support me and this life of music.
-- James Taylor

#Grateful #Play #People

I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.
-- James Taylor

#Writing #Guitar #Wander

The relationship, the marriage, the commitment, the partnership... This is the holy ground.
-- James Taylor

#Commitment #Partnership #Holy

Music is like a huge release of tension.
-- James Taylor

#Release #Music Is #Tension

It's easier to make an album, harder to figure out how to get people to notice it...
-- James Taylor

#People #Albums #Easier

If you think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.
-- James Taylor

#Thinking #Self #Sentimental

People are making a lot of music and higher and higher quality. I can't say the same thing for how people are listening to music. People are hearing music through terrible speakers, little computer speakers, there's a lot to get back to in terms of hi-fi and people listening to better quality, technically better quality music.
-- James Taylor

#People #Listening #Quality

I don't play the kind of music that works in a football stadium.
-- James Taylor

#Football #Play #Kind

I believe 100 percent in the power and importance of music.
-- James Taylor

#Believe #I Believe #Importance

Ireland, Italy and Brazil are the most musical places for me. They're extremely musical cultures and anything you pitch they basically catch.
-- James Taylor

#Musical #Culture #Brazil

It is the most delightful thing that ever happens to me, when I hear something coming out of my guitar and out of my mouth that wasn't there before.
-- James Taylor

#Guitar #Mouths #Coming Out

I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.
-- James Taylor

#Pretending #Songwriting

Time will take your money, but money won't buy time.
-- James Taylor

#Time #Money

I think people are isolated because of the nature of human consciousness, and they like it when they feel the connection between themselves and someone else.
-- James Taylor

#Nature #Thinking #People

A concert is always like a feast day to me.
-- James Taylor

#Concerts

The SECRET to Love is in OPENING up your Heart
-- James Taylor

#Heart #Love Is #Opening Up

I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.
-- James Taylor

#Music #Play #People

You have to choose whether to love yourself or not.
-- James Taylor

#Love Yourself

It is a process of discovery. It's being quiet enough and undisturbed enough for a period of time so that the songs can begin to sort of peek out, and you begin to have emotional experiences in a musical way.
-- James Taylor

#Song #Emotional #Discovery

That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind.
-- James Taylor

#Motivational #Art #Attention

I find it a lot healthier for me to be someplace where I can go outside in my bare feet.
-- James Taylor

#Feet #Bare Feet

Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King and recognize that there are ties between us, all men and women living on the Earth. Ties of hope and love, sister and brotherhood, that we are bound together in our desire to see the world become a place in which our children can grow free and strong. We are bound together by the task that stands before us and the road that lies ahead. We are bound and we are bound.
-- James Taylor

#Spiritual #Strong #Kings

To be a musician, especially a singer-songwriter - well, you don't do that if you have a thriving social life. You do it because there's an element of alienation in your life.
-- James Taylor

#Writing #Singers #Musician

Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.
-- James Taylor

#Mysterious #Process #Songwriting

There'll come a writing phase where you have to defend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.
-- James Taylor

#Writing #Phones #Done

All it really needed was the proper point of view. No one's gonna bring me down.
-- James Taylor

#Inspirational #Views #Point Of View

Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have made a lot of difference to my audience that I'm as bald as a billiard ball!
-- James Taylor

#Differences #Balls #Made

I don't know much about God. But if everything does originate with God, then certainly songs do as well.
-- James Taylor

#Song #Doe #Wells

Shower the people you love with love.
-- James Taylor

#People #Showers

Try not to try to hard, it's just a lovely ride;)
-- James Taylor

#Lovely #Trying

But it's only after you've played it on the road 20 or 30 times that it becomes really finished and polished...and you realize what it means, and you get the phrasing right.
-- James Taylor

#Writing #Mean #Realizing

If you feel like singing along, don't.
-- James Taylor

#Singing #Feels

In my mind I'm going to Carolina. Can't you see the sunshine, can't you just feel the moonshine? Ain't it just like a friend of mine, to hit me from behind, and I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind.
-- James Taylor

#Travel #Sunshine #Mind

Songs are like myths. Myths are useful because they allow you to cast yourself and your life and your own experience. And for some people, 'Fire and Rain' speaks to them in that way.
-- James Taylor

#Song #Rain #Writing

Knowing when to quit is probably a very important thing, but I just am not ready.
-- James Taylor

#Knowing #Important #Quitting

['Fire and Rain'] is sort of almost uncomfortably close. Almost confessional. The reason I could write a song like that at that point, and probably couldn't now, is that I didn't have any sense that anyone would hear it. I started writing the song while I was in London...and I was totally unknown.... So I assumed that they would never be heard. I could just write or say anything I wanted. Now I'm very aware, and I have to deal with my stage fright and my anxiety about people examining or judging it. The idea that people will pass judgment on it is not a useful thought.
-- James Taylor

#Song #Rain #Writing

Never give up, never slow down, never grow old and never ever die young.
-- James Taylor

#Giving Up #Slow Down #Young

Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose Won't you let me go down in my dreams?
-- James Taylor

#Dream #Color #Let Me Go

Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you gotta do is call, and I'll be there, 'cause you've got a friend.
-- James Taylor

#Friendship #Summer #Spring

I don't find the songs; they find me. I just strum my guitar and wait for a lyric to come.
-- James Taylor

#Music #Song #Guitar

I can take criticisms but not compliments.
-- James Taylor

#Criticism #Compliment

I have a love-hate relationship with the Grammys because I don't see the music world as a competitive sport.
-- James Taylor

#Sports #Hate #World

It's probably foolish to expect relationships to go on forever and to say that because something only lasts 10 years, it's a failure.
-- James Taylor

#Years #Forever #Goes On

You can bring your enemies to their knees with the possible exception of the North Vietnamese.
-- James Taylor

#Revenge #Enemy #Knees

All invisible from where we stand the connections come to pass, and though too strong to comprehend they affect us not the less.
-- James Taylor

#Strong #Philosophy #Connections

The sides are steep and the nights are long and cold down in the hole, light and love and the world above mean nothing to the mole.
-- James Taylor

#Philosophy #Mean #Night

Turn away from your animal kind, try to leave your body, just to live in your mind.
-- James Taylor

#Philosophy #Animal #Mind

I wanted to perform, I wanted to write songs, and I wanted to get lots of chicks.
-- James Taylor

#Song #Writing #Chicks

Within my heart is carved a sculpture of your love.
-- James Taylor

#Romantic #Heart #Sculpture

Einstein said that he never could understand it all, the planets spinning in space, the smile upon your face.
-- James Taylor

#Space #Spinning #Faces

There's been plenty of adversity, starting the moment he was born. He had a respiratory crisis, and it was touch and go for a week whether he would survive. I think ever since, you can feel this pulse in the guy, an almost physical enthusiasm.
-- James Taylor

#Adversity #Thinking #Guy

It was like the top of the roof came off the house, .. He had that effect on everyone.
-- James Taylor

#House #Roof

I can't thank you enough for showing up. It's not the same without you.
-- James Taylor

#Thankfulness #Showing Up #Enough

Won't you look down upon me Jesus, you've got to help me make a stand. You just got to see me through another day.
-- James Taylor

#Religious #Jesus #Religion

I don't build no heathen temples, where the Lord has done laid a hand. There's a well on the hill, let it be.
-- James Taylor

#Religious #Hands #Religion

Though the body sleeps, the heart will never rest.
-- James Taylor

#Heart #Sleep #Body

Music is my living. I enjoy selling my music.
-- James Taylor

#Selling #Enjoy #Music Is

Synchronized with the rising moon Even with the evening star They were true love written in stone They were never alone, they were never that far apart
-- James Taylor

#Stars #Moon #Rising

I think there's probably a God-shaped hole in everybody's being. Even if God only exists in people's minds, He's still a force.
-- James Taylor

#God #Thinking #People

I don't get into heavy political numbers because I don't find them lyrical.
-- James Taylor

#Numbers #Political #Lyrical

Don't be sad cause your sun is down, the night doesn't need your sorrow. Don't be sad cause the light is gone, just keep your mind on tomorrow.
-- James Taylor

#Sadness #Night #Light

I gathered up my sorrows and I sold them all for gold. And I gathered up the gold, and I threw it all away.
-- James Taylor

#Sadness #Sorrow #Gold

Baby booty, juicy fruity, truck stop cutie, road side beauty, I'm in love with you.
-- James Taylor

#Baby #Love You #Quality

He's halfway sick and halfway stoned. He'd sure like to kick, but he's too far gone. So they wind him down with methadone.
-- James Taylor

#Wind #Sick #Alcohol

I told you that I love you, I was only telling a lie. I'll be long gone come the crack of dawn and I believe the word is goodbye.
-- James Taylor

#Goodbye #Lying #Believe

Do me wrong, do me right, tell me lies, but hold me tight.
-- James Taylor

#Lying #Low Self Esteem #Hold Me

Quart of whiskey a day for months working hard on a long poem. Wife hiding bottles, myself hiding bottles. Murderous and suicidal. Many hospitalizations, many alibis.
-- James Taylor

#Suicidal #Long #Wife

Just nine lucky soldiers had come through the night, half of them wounded and barely alive. Just nine out of twenty was headed for home, with eleven stories to tell.
-- James Taylor

#Home #Night #Soldier

Once you get that two-way energy thing going, everyone benefits hugely.
-- James Taylor

#Two #Energy #Benefits

It's hard to find a way forward. When you're 18 it happens in huge chunks every day, but after 20 years, growth is much more costly.
-- James Taylor

#Years #Growth #Progress

It's a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you're being autobiographical.
-- James Taylor

#Real #Persons

If the gig's going really well, I'm incredibly happy on stage and really feel good about my life and things.
-- James Taylor

#Feel Good #Gigs #Stage

If I were to try to identify a turning point I'd say that was it - getting clean.
-- James Taylor

#Trying #Cleaning

I'm looking forward to being able to retire from being a public figure and being able to afford to be myself!
-- James Taylor

#Able #Looking Forward #Figures

I was in chemical jail.
-- James Taylor

#Jail #Chemicals

I was a functional addict.
-- James Taylor

#Addiction #Addict

I think that we're all totally isolated beings and always will be.
-- James Taylor

#Thinking #Isolated

I think it surprises a lot of people that I'm still around, you know, still - that I'm not pushing up daisies, as they say.
-- James Taylor

#Thinking #People #Pushing

I tend to write out the first iteration of a lyric here and then go over here and make variations on it, on the page opposite.
-- James Taylor

#Writing #Opposites #Variation

I sometimes wonder how many of these lifetime achievement awards you can accept before you have to do the decent thing and die.
-- James Taylor

#Awards #Achievement #Sometimes

I had a very moral upbringing, and spiritual in a sort of not very specific way.
-- James Taylor

#Spiritual #Way #Moral

Bruce Springsteen's a rock star. Elton John is a rock star. I'm a folk musician. Honestly, I think that's true.
-- James Taylor

#Stars #Thinking #Rocks