Neil Diamond
Chelsea Morning is a great Joni Mitchell song and I guess I'm partial to her lyrics because they show me a slightly different perspective on life.Collection: Morning
I came back to performing with a different attitude about performing and myself. I wasn't expecting perfection any more, just hoping for an occasional inspiration.Collection: Attitude
When you're on a merry-go-round, you miss a lot of the scenery.
You can't plan to write a great song. It just happens to you. It drops in your lap. It's the same thing with a woman.
I still need practice in enjoying the fruits of success.
It's very difficult for me to say 'I love you' but to sing 'I love you' for me is easier.
I don't like all of the music to be serious and deadly.
Because my musical training has been limited, I've never been restricted by what technical musicians might call a song.
I like having a woman. I like having someone to come home to, to make all of the hard work feel worth it. I need someone with me. And I want someone.
There's a mystery to writing, and you don't really know where most of it comes from.
I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.
Songs are life in 80 words or less.
If it can affect me, if it has meaning to me, if I feel I can do it well, I will do it and record it and thats why I recorded these songs.
Brooklyn is not the easiest place to grow up in, although I wouldn't change that experience for anything.
The main objective in any song, the songs that I write, has always been that it reflect the way I feel, that it touch me when I'm finished with it, that it moves me, that it can take me along with it and involve me in what its saying.
I think probably Australians have just a little more taste than most people.
No, I majored in biology, in a pre-med program.
Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory.
I've looked at photographs of myself during concerts and it sometimes looks as if I'm in a fencing move, with a guitar in my hands instead of a sword.
Song Sung Blue took a lot of compressing and refining, and it has one of my favorite lyrics.
Songwritng is what I do.
Performing is the easiest part of what I do, and songwriting is the hardest.
I'm lucky. Hard work is the key, but luck plays a part.
I'm throwing myself back in because I like being married. I don't want to end this whole fabulous journey alone. I want someone by my side who I love and who loves me. I've finally found somebody who's up to the task of being my wife, because I'm very high maintenance.
When I need my wife or when I need companionship or someone to talk to, I need it, like, now. So my wife will have to give up whatever she's doing at that moment to tend to my needs. And, in the same way, I would tend to hers. That's not such an easy thing to do.
I may have a little bit of a talent for music, but I've learnt to tap into my own self when I write. When I put the drill bit inside my heart, sometimes I come up with something light and frothy, sometimes with something deep and painful, but it's great to connect with the audience.
It was a real hand-to-mouth existence in those early days - I'd have whatever dry cereal there was in the house for breakfast, 30 cents to spend on lunch and a hot dog for dinner. I did that for years. So there was definitely a hunger in me, of various kinds, to succeed.
I didn't want to repeat my mistakes so I stopped, took some time out and started having therapy. My songs were bringing up feelings inside of me I didn't really understand, so I wanted to understand where they were coming from to help me be a better person and a better songwriter.
The cardinal rule for any performer is that they should know themselves before they enter the spotlight, and I didn't. I was just Neil and I did what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to get married, so I got married. I was supposed to get a job, so I looked for work.
I don't feel I have to write deep and meaningful songs; they can be light and meaningless. It has to do with the place I am in my life, a really good place.
I definitely don't feel like I'm 71. I feel like I did when I was - between 30 and 40. The body ages. The mind doesn't.
I used to go to my kids' soccer games and I was the only parent who wasn't screaming, because I'd have to do a show that night. It was hard. Moms and dads get more emotional at those soccer and Little League games than at a professional game.
Hands, touching hands, reaching out, touching me, touching you.Collection: Song
The art of love is who you share it with.Collection: Art
But you make me sing like a guitar humming . . .Collection: Guitar
My voice is unadorned. I don't try for perfection. I try to be honest and truthful and soulful with the voice I have. If I make mistakes in notes, or there are cracks in notes, I don't fix them. That's the way it is.Collection: Mistake
Money talks, but it don't sing and dance, and it don't walk. And long as I can have you here with me, I'd much rather be, forever in blue jeans.Collection: Philosophy
I've finally found somebody who's up to the task of being my wife, because I'm very ... high maintenance.Collection: Wife
Love is still a simple act of faith, and a faithful heart is always worth the wait.Collection: Love
Love never doubts or suffers or cries. Love shows no fear, love tells no lies.Collection: Lying
You have to go out there and give a piece of yourself -- your life, your soul. And you better give the audience everything you can -- physically, emotionally, musically. Then maybe they'll accept you and give you a standing ovation at the end.Collection: Giving
The music is key. It has the power to transport you. I go from being a slightly insecure, shy kind of a person offstage, to this super-confident, motivated, entity onstage.Collection: Insecure
Nothing is sadder than love left unheard.Collection: Sadness
Home's the most excellent place of all.Collection: Home
Maybe tonight, maybe tonight by the fire all alone you and I. Nothing around but the sound of heart and your sighs.Collection: Romantic
The truth always stays the same.Collection: Expression
Being lost is worth the being found.Collection: Irony
I followed all life's pleasures wherever they would lead, but someone I can treasure is all I really need.Collection: Sadness
My music is in young people's lives because it's so much a part of their parents' lives.Collection: People
When love is unkind, it is not love anymore.Collection: Love