Quotes By James Taylor

Though 'Fire and Rain' is very personal, for other people it resonates as a sort of commonly held experience... And that's what happens with me. I write things for personal reasons, and then in some cases it... can be a shared experience.

Things started to get out of control when I began reading that I was a superstar.

I don't think anyone really says anything new.

I tend to write out the first iteration of a lyric here and then go over here and make variations on it, on the page opposite.

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.

People have used my songs and guitar style to teach guitar for a long time.

Music is my living. I enjoy selling my music.

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'm very unstable; there's no stability in a musician's life at all. You live on a bus or on the road hand to mouth and you don't know where your money's coming from.

I don't take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.

That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind.

If you feel like singing along, don't.

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.

I find it a lot healthier for me to be someplace where I can go outside in my bare feet.

I don't get into heavy political numbers because I don't find them lyrical.

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.

I don't play the kind of music that works in a football stadium.

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me.

It's hard to find a way forward. When you're 18 it happens in huge chunks every day, but after 20 years, growth is much more costly.

I think it surprises a lot of people that I'm still around, you know, still - that I'm not pushing up daisies, as they say.

The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.

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.

I am myself for a living. I don't animate a character.

Certain things in life are more important than the usual crap that everyone strives for.

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.

I'm trying to look at my blessings and how amazingly well against all odds things have turned out for me.

Time will take your money, but money won't buy time.

A concert is always like a feast day to me.

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?

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.