Song Quotes

Some of the press who speak loudly about the freedom of the press are themselves the enemies of freedom. Countless people dare not say a thing because they know it will be picked up and made a song of by the press. That limits freedom.

The best compliment I ever had is, one day I was in Nashville, some disc jockey said, Hey, that sounds like a Tom T. Hall song. Up until then there hadn't been any such thing.

Stevie didn't use the technology to drive the song. He used it to enhance. I use the tools to further my work, I don't use my work to further the tools.

One Long Year was just a song here and there, and it was meant to reflect the mood that I was in but unfortunately it also reflected too little of any particular thing rather than hanging together as a whole album.

I'm totally convinced I can write the perfect pop song.

I consider the piano my 'main' instrument and have been playing for as long as I can remember. It seems to me that I might have come up with something resembling a song as early as 4 or 5 years old.

It's not that I don't love the song. My songs are like my children: some you want around and some you want to send off to college as soon as possible.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

A good country song takes a page out of somebody's life and puts it to music.

The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death.

I was asked by a group to write a song on the theme of brotherhood. This was before women's liberation, when brotherhood meant men and women both, so I wrote the song. Since I had always been very fond of the Passion Chorale, I wrote words to that great piece.

When you write a song, a song has longevity.

Every song is different.

Music makes us want to live. You don't know how many times people have told me that they'd been down and depressed and just wanted to die. But then a special song caught their ear and that helped give them renewed strength. That's the power music has.

If I waited for inspiration every time I sat down to write a song I probably would be a plumber today.

I think songwriters are more related to fiction writers. The Odyssey was a story in song. To me, that's so beautiful, all those painted characters, all those travels and adventures.

Above these universal themes 'Truth Will Set U Free' is also a song composed for those who were born gay. I am a straight man so I do not profess to understand or know what a LGBT person experiences but I do recognize injustice when I see it.

I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them.

If I get an idea for a song, I have a melody for it. I'm a musician first. I'm not limited by the fretboard.

But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.

I'm scared of karaoke. I think if I did have a go to karaoke song, it would be 'Whatta Man' by Salt-n-Pepa.

They look for the top note to end every song. They don't know what they are singing about. There is no style.

One of them would definitely be the Nelson Mandela gig, when I played the tribute song for him. He was up and dancing, and he really enjoyed it. It was a really lovely occasion.

It's hard to really articulate what the parameters are that make one song parody-able and another song not, but if I can come up with a good enough idea for it, I go for it, and if not, then I have to move on.

I'm not afraid of being thought of as someone who is associated with film music. Why not? If it's a good song, what does it matter?

I just try to get inside the song and imagine what comes next.

Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, no winter in thy year.

You can keep rummaging around until you find a song you like, but you can't predict whether it'll hit or not.

Sometimes you try a song and people don't respond, or you tell a story and you just hear crickets. But when you play thousands of shows, you start to refine stuff.

Technically, I've been retired for some time now. All I ever do is occasionally write songs for friends, such as one, for a friend who had just turned 80. I wrote a song for him called, The First 80 Years are The Hardest.