James Taylor
When you write a song, it may come from a personal space, but it very seldom actually represents you. It comes out of a sort of mood of melancholy, somehow. It's almost theatrical.Collection: Space
Sobering up was responsible for breaking up my marriage. That's what it couldn't stand.Collection: Marriage
I find it a lot healthier for me to be someplace where I can go outside in my bare feet.Collection: Health
That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind.Collection: Art
I was a huge Beatles fan. We could talk about who I listened to growing up and what my sources were, but certainly the Beatles were a late, important resource for me, and I just took my guitar and a handful of songs, and I decided, well, I'll just go over and travel around Europe and see what comes of it.Collection: Travel
It's probably foolish to expect relationships to go on forever and to say that because something only lasts 10 years, it's a failure.Collection: Failure
I'm glad about what's happening to the music business. This last crop of people we had in the 90s, who are going away now, they didn't like music. They didn't trust musicians. They wanted something else from it.Collection: Trust
I have a studio in a barn at home - we rehearse there, we film there and we record there. It's fun to hang out with my guys and see what comes out next.Collection: Home
I have a love-hate relationship with the Grammys because I don't see the music world as a competitive sport.Collection: Relationship
Time will take your money, but money won't buy time.Collection: Money
The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.
I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others.
Being on a boat that's moving through the water, it's so clear. Everything falls into place in terms of what's important and what's not.
I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.
If you think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.
To me, very much of what is artistic is people's very creative and inventive ways out of impossible situations.
Knowing when to quit is probably a very important thing, but I just am not ready.
I collect hats. That's what you do when you're bald.
People should watch out for three things: avoid a major addiction, don't get so deeply into debt that it controls your life, and don't start a family before you're ready to settle down.
I don't know much about God. But if everything does originate with God, then certainly songs do as well.
Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.
Bruce Springsteen's a rock star. Elton John is a rock star. I'm a folk musician. Honestly, I think that's true.
If I were to try to identify a turning point I'd say that was it - getting clean.
I don't read music. I don't write or read music.
The Beatles were a phenomenon, but they were also ordinary blokes like anyone else. I was lucky enough to see that side.
I'm looking forward to being able to retire from being a public figure and being able to afford to be myself!
When I cleaned up some 17 odd years ago, I felt terrible for about six months. The only thing that gave me any real relief was strenuous physical activity.
I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about black music, about soul music.
I think people are isolated because of the nature of human consciousness, and they like it when they feel the connection between themselves and someone else.
A concert is always like a feast day to me.
You have to choose whether to love yourself or not.
It is the most delightful thing that ever happens to me, when I hear something coming out of my guitar and out of my mouth that wasn't there before.
Performing is a profound experience, at least for me. It's not as if I sit down and play 'Fire and Rain' by myself, just to hear it again. But to offer it up... the energy that it somehow summons live takes me right back, and I do get a reconnection to the emotions.
It's a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you're being autobiographical. But it's what everyone wants - to get everyone's attention, to have your music make a living for you, to be validated in that way.
I was in chemical jail.
I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.
Photographers and reporters are mostly after me. They want to know what I read and what I'm like and I don't really know myself, so how can I tell them?
Music is my living. I enjoy selling my music.
I sometimes wonder how many of these lifetime achievement awards you can accept before you have to do the decent thing and die.
I don't reinvent myself in any major way. It seems to be a slow evolution. I go back and visit certain themes that I feel strongly about and resonate with me emotionally.
I don't get into heavy political numbers because I don't find them lyrical.
What I've always done as an entertainer is try to come up with things that people will find interesting, or compelling, or humorous.
I had a very moral upbringing, and spiritual in a sort of not very specific way.
Ireland, Italy and Brazil are the most musical places for me. They're extremely musical cultures and anything you pitch they basically catch.
I think that we're all totally isolated beings and always will be.
It's a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you're being autobiographical.
Television news is now entertainment, and the stories are being written by the people that have a special interest in them.
There'll come a writing phase where you have to defend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.
Americans work a long away ahead of themselves because of the size of the place. To make any impact at all you have to promote yourself with live performances ages before a release.
If you're an addict, it controls your life and your life becomes uncontrollable. It's boring and painful, filling your system with something that makes you stare at your shoes for six hours.