Jon Foreman Writing Quotations

As far as when I'm writing a song, I think I'm writing first and foremost for myself.

I'm not really one to be on camera, I'd rather be writing songs.

You want songs to sound cohesive with the other songs on the record but when you first start writing you just want to write to tell the truth.

I try to write songs just for the song itself. I don't try and think about where it's going to end up, that way you're writing for the good of the song.

When I'm happy, when I'm enjoying life, I'm home, I'm surfing, I'm spending time with my wife, my friends and I'm not thinking about the pain. And then the moment I encounter something that feels difficult, I feel like that's when, for me, I turn to writing and thinking and maybe a song comes from that.

I like to write on airplanes... that forced meditation time when you have nothing else to do, so your mind is allowed to go to places it wouldn't otherwise go.

I usually write from my own experience, and that's definitely a true statement for me. I think having a song about desiring to live and wanting to get it right, which many of my songs do, often I have to clarify that I haven't figured it out yet.

Experience is all I have. I equate song-writing with archeology. Every day you dig. You dig into different places within yourself - even finding places that you've rarely been. And buried within the soil is song.

Sometimes, the best songs are the ones you write without any pen and paper or audio recording device or guitar in your hands. Because there's nothing between you and the melody; it's just a great lyric.