Joni Mitchell famous quotes

Keep a good heart. That's the most important thing in life. It's not how much money you make or what you can acquire. The art of it is to keep a good heart.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Art #Heart #Important

All my battles were with male egos. I’m just looking for equality, not to dominate. But I want to be able to control my vision.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Ego #Vision #Battle

We are stardust, we are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Peace #Hippie #Garden

I thrive on change. That's probably why my chord changes are weird, because chords depict emotions. They'll be going along on one key and I'll drop off a cliff, and suddenly they will go into a whole other key signature. That will drive some people crazy, but that's how my life is.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Crazy #Keys #People

I see music as fluid architecture.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Architecture #Fluid

I love you when I forget about me.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Love You #Confusion #Forget

Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl. Most of my best work came out of it.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Pearls #Sand #Best Work

I still believe in the power of the word, that words inspire.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Believe #Inspire #Stills

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels The dizzy dancing way you feel As every fairy tale comes real I've looked at love that way.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Love #Real #Moon

Won't you stay We'll put on the day And we'll talk in present tenses
-- Joni Mitchell

At the point where I'm trying to force something and it's not happening, and I'm getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go and pick up the guitar.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Writing #Guitar #Frustrated

Fly silly sea bird, no dreams can possess you, no voices can blame you for sun on your wings.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Dream #Philosophy #Silly

Chase away the demons, and they will take the angels with them.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Angel #Demon

I learned a woman is never an old woman.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Old Woman

My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Heart #Broken #Stupidity

I've looked at life from both sides now...from win and lose, and still somehow it's life's illusions I recall I really don't know life at all.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Love #Winning #Positive Life

All I really, really want our love to do is to bring out the best in me and in you too.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Love #Romance #Our Love

I wrote 'Big Yellow Taxi' on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart this blight on paradise. That's when I sat down and wrote the song.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Beautiful #Song #Morning

Happiness is the best facelift.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Facelifts

Love is touching souls.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Love #Relationship #Communication

When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Artist #World #Helm

There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Honesty #Needs #World

You know that it never has been easy Whether you do or do not resign Whether you travel the breadth of the extremities Or stick to some straighter line.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Lines #Sticks #Easy

I'm a little young for retirement.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Retirement #Littles #Young

I'm a fine artist working in a commercial arena, so that's my cross to bear
-- Joni Mitchell

#Artist #Bears #Arena

That's one thing that's always, like, been a difference between, like, the performing arts, and being a painter, you know. A painter does a painting, and he paints it, and that's it, you know. He has the joy of creating it, it hangs on a wall, and somebody buys it, and maybe somebody buys it again, or maybe nobody buys it and it sits up in a loft somewhere until he dies. But he never, you know, nobody ever, nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Paint a Starry Night again, man!' You know? He painted it and that was it.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Art #Wall #Night

You've got to keep the child alive; you can't create without it.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Children #Creativity #Alive

To enjoy my music, you need depth and emotionality.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Depth #Needs #Enjoy

Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Life #Grief #Sorrow

You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Music #Song #Eye

I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?
-- Joni Mitchell

#Tragedy #Needs #Emotion

No one likes to have less than they had before. That's the nature of the human animal.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Animal #Likes #Humans

Applause, applause, life is our cause.
-- Joni Mitchell

#Inspirational #Causes #Life Is

people will tell you were they have gone, they'll tell you where to go, but until you get there for yourself you never really know.
-- Joni Mitchell

#People #Gone