Lyric Quotes

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.

Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it.

There is in us a lyric germ or nucleus which deserves respect; it bids a man to ponder or create; and in this dim corner of himself he can take refuge and find consolations which the society of his fellow creatures does not provide.

The fact that The Bridge contains folk lore and other material suitable to the epic form need not therefore prove its failure as a long lyric poem, with interrelated sections.

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.

I sit down and draw from my lyric book. I sit down and start looking through it and see if there is anything that strikes me that I've written.

In country music the lyric is important and the melodies get a little more complex all the time, and you hear marvelous new singers who are interested in writing and interpreting a lyric and in all form of popular music.

I get a different kind of lyric from someone else that might make me go in a different musical direction.

That's really what was wonderful for me growing up, since I got to know so many of the songwriters who liked me and thought I had talent. They would then tell me how to read a lyric and sing a song, and challenge me to try and find a different end to a song.

I understand that transposing a song a half step can effect the believability of a lyric.

Rock and roll doesn't necessarily mean a band. It doesn't mean a singer, and it doesn't mean a lyric, really. It's that question of trying to be immortal.

He doesn't make it so complicated but just really allows the lyric to come through even though there's a lot of production going on. I think that's the key and that's the magic, it's making sure that people could still connect with the lyrics while they're on the dance floor.

In those days, it didn't take much imagination to come up with something that required great lyric development skills. You just thought of an experience that you might have gone through, and write it down.

The most astonishing joy is to receive from the muses the gift of a whole lyric.

I was half asleep lying there writing this lyric in my head at about 3:30 in the morning. I woke Steve up with this idea and then we went into the living room where there was a little upright piano and finished the song. I wonder where that piano is now?

In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.

I don't really get shaken very much. People could heckle me, a spotlight could go out, I could forget a lyric... I'm not operating on somebody's brain, you know what I mean? So I just think it's all funny.

I'd rather sing a good lyric written by someone else than one of my own that is terrible.

Every night we all felt grateful to be there, stunned at the amount of people that are there, and stunned at their reactions. They go crazy; they know every lyric from eight years of age to eighty. It's unbelievable.

I have a little dictaphone and if a sound takes my fancy or if a lyric comes to me in the middle of the night I'll just record it there and then.

I have a lyric journal that I write in a lot. When I'm going to play, I just sit down and have my books with me and my notes and tapes and whatever I need to refer to. I just play and try different things. It's a kind of discipline.