Joni Mitchell Song Quotations

You have this mounting aggressive ignorance with the rabbit's foot of their particular religion. You don't really have any kind of spiritual law, just a kind of a rabid mental illness. The songs are a little slice of life.

We managed to put together a compilation that had some creativity to it. In the meantime I was listening to the free radio stations and I noticed that during their war coverage they were playing these songs born out of the Vietnam War that were all critical of the soldiers.

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.

I had made all these rules for myself: I'm not writing social commentary, I'm not writing love songs.

I always thought the women of song don't get along, and I don't know why that is.

I don't like to make fluffy little songs, but now I want to make some light songs.

What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song.

People used to say nobody can sing my songs but me, they're too personal.

I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them.

When I was 19 I went to art school. I had six months of teaching myself to play baritone ukulele under my belt, so was sort of a novice folkie. ... I was singing folk songs at that time.

Musically, I would never run dry. Any time I sit down to an instrument, I could write a song.

Oh it gets so lonely When you're walking And the streets are full of strangers

Tears and fears and feeling proud To say I love you, right out loud Dreams and schemes and circus crowds I've looked at life that way. But now old friends are acting strange They shake their heads, they say I've changed Something's lost, but something's gained In living every day 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

How does a person create a song? A lot of it is being open to encounter and to be in touch with the miraculous.

In a pure anonymous encounter you find a world alive and full of character. In New York, the street adventures are incredible. There are a thousand stories in a single block. You see the stories in people's faces. You hear the songs immediately. Here, in Los Angeles, there are fewer characters because they are all inside automobiles.

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.