Gordon Lightfoot
I try to keep it light and positive most of the time, whereas earlier on I didn't always do that.Collection: Positive
A lot of people influenced me as I was learning, but probably Bing Crosby was the most influential because I would hear his Christmas albums, which my parents played a lot.Collection: Christmas
You just get the vibes of your surroundings and it rubs off on you.
All that remains is the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters.
I'm not really a bird person or an Audubon guy who studies them, but as I was around them, they interested me.
Turning back the pages of my sweet shattered dream, I wonder if she'll ever do the same; And the thing that I call living is just being satisfied With knowing I've got no one left to blame.
I wrote one called 'The No Hotel.' I got inspired in 1989 while I was on a trip down to Brazil, and I didn't finish it until eight years later.
I don't think they should regulate the music field. I don't see how they can regulate the arts.
I was a drummer in the bugle band in cadets. I marched. It's probably quite funny to look back on it.
'If You Could Read My Mind' is a different experience every time I sing it. It's just that kind of a song.
Everybody's got so much of their own to deal with. They have no one to turn to.
Both the Beatles and The Rolling Stones broke on the music scene the summer I was in England. I can vividly remember hearing 'She Loves You' in August 1963.
I have to play everything just perfectly. I can't take less of myself. I'm strong. I'm prepared.
I never believed - or knew for sure - if I would be able to make a professional life in music. But it turned out that way.
I know that we're being inexorably taken over by the Americans. Without a doubt. I don't mean invaded or anything like that, just taken over. By degrees.
You hear about people who write 15 to 20 novels. How do they do it? You just gotta do it.
I started writing songs in high school, so you had to write this stuff out and register it with the Library of Congress. You had to learn how to do that stuff.
I just do the cream-of-the-crop songs in my show. We just bowl them over; they love us. It just keeps getting better.
I did a lot of canoe tripping earlier on. I was on 10 trips, and I would get the feel of the forest and the wilderness, you know, that I always knew was in my soul to begin with.
I've just been a very lucky person. I'm 76 years of age, you know. I've been very lucky.
I started writing songs in high school. And eventually, I got some songs recorded by some major artists, mostly because I was out there performing, and I was working in coffee houses and lounges, and people came to see me and hear my material.
I was happy to be in England because my mother had always loved the royals, and so do I. My mother had every memento you could find on the Queen.
I have just a really strong love for people when I perform. I really do.
Every time you wanted to do something, you'd hope it would score. You'd keep trying and trying, and all of the sudden, something would come right out of left field, like 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.' No one had any idea about that one.
Nobody had any idea that 'If You Could Read My Mind' would become a hit single.
Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?Collection: Doe
Will you gather daydreams or will you gather wealth? How can you find your fortune when you cannot find yourself?Collection: Philosophy
If you plan to face tomorrow, do it soon.Collection: Faces
I'm a little nuts. I'm a lot nuts. All I know is that in the midst of the madness of this world it's my therapy. The music touches my heartstrings.Collection: Nuts
Rainy day people all know there's no sorrow they can't rise above.Collection: Sadness
Everything is trust, all the rest is dust.Collection: Dust
If I could read your mind, what a tale your thoughts could tell. Just like a paperback novel, the kind that drugstores sell.Collection: Art
There is always something wrong with a song, you can't be perfect.Collection: Song
You will go with me everywhere. When I'm dreaming, you still share my lonely nights.Collection: Romantic
Be calm in the face of all common disgraces.Collection: Faces
To wear the crown of peace, you must wear the crown of thorns.Collection: Crowns
When love is true there is no truer occupation.Collection: Love Is
The house you live in will never fall down, if you pity the stranger who stands at your door.Collection: Fall
Think about the fool who by his virtue can be found in a most unusual situation playing jester to the clown.Collection: Thinking
If there's a reason for the way that life is I'd like to find it. After all, who's life is it?Collection: Education
Sometimes I think it's a shame, when I get feeling better when I'm feeling no pain.Collection: Pain
Those who put their faith in fire, in fire their faith shall be repaid.Collection: Revenge
'If You Could Read My Mind' was written during the collapse of my marriage. It's a great song. No one has any gripes about it. I wondered what my wife and daughter might think. My daughter is the one who got me to correct 'The feelings that you lacked' to 'The feelings that we lacked'.Collection: Daughter
I never got really good at hockey.Collection: Hockey
Whitecaps in profusion all around me, but somehow in your eyes I found the strength to sail upon that raging sea.Collection: Friendship
Words are for explaining the mistakes we might have made, names are for calling when there is nothing left to say.Collection: Relationship
When I was 16, I used to drive huge loads of laundry in a three ton truck. I would turn round at night to drive back and see the band in a place north of Toronto called Dunn's Pavilion. I would drive that truck all day and they drive back and all the way until one day I wrecked the truck. I fell asleep and wrecked it. I was OK and so was my helper. I called my dad and the first words out of his mouth were, "are you OK?" I was really lucky I had a kind father.Collection: Dad
I love jazz. I still do. Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz are so good. I took a notification course in Jazz Orchestration. It wasn't a grandiose as you'd think but I did have to to go to Los Angeles to do it and get an understanding of the keyboard because the keyboard became my tool and I used it a lot in transposing and composing. All the flats and time values. I spent a year doing that because in those days you had to be able to write your own music and read sheets.Collection: Writing