Dorothy Fields Writing Quotations

I don't care how good a song is. If it holds back the storyline, stalls the plot, your audience will reject it.

A song doesn't just come on. I've always had to tease it out, squeeze it out. 'No thesaurus can give you those words, no rhyming dictionary. They must happen out of you.

Keep it in tune with the times, but don't write with the specific purpose of trying to create a hit. If you're doing it strictly to make money, you're crazy. There are easier ways to make money.

I do not think men have more talent. There are a great many women in the arts; novelists, painters, sculptors, poets-but the proportion is far lower in the field of song writing.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning could write a poem two pages long. Could she have brought it to a music publisher?

Write what you feel. Write because of that need for expression.