Quotes from Joni Mitchell

You've got to shake your fists at lightning now. You've got to roar like forest fire.

And the seasons they go round and round

Sex sells everything and sex kills

Who you gonna get to do the dirty work When all the slaves are free?

If you're smart or rich or lucky Maybe you'll beat the laws of man But the inner laws of spirit And the outer laws of nature No man can No, no man can...

I'm a pretty good cook Sitting on my groceries Come up to my kitchen I'll show you my best recipe I try and I try but I can't save a cent I'm up after midnight, cooking Trying to make my rent I'm rough but I'm pleasin' I was raised on robbery

Tears and fears and feeling proud To say, "I love you" right out loud Dreams and schemes and circus crowds I've looked at life that way Oh, but now old friends they're acting strange And they shake their heads and they tell me that I've changed Well something's lost, but something's gained In living every day.

shut me up and talk to me!

Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on I wish I had a river so long I would teach my feet to fly I wish I had a river I could skate away on.

I think the fact that I did not have the masters, that I don't have any musical heroes…my music is pretty original. Nearly anyone you talk to in my generation had a hero that they studied and analyzed and strove to be like. They did air guitar in front of the mirror. So it was less "muse" than "ick." Music comes from the muse, not from other musicians.

Took up all the trees put them in a tree museum Charged the people a dollar and a half just to see them You don't know what you've got til it's gone. Took paradise and put up a parking lot.

Sitting in a park in Paris, France, Reading the news and it sure looks bad. They won't give peace a chance. That was just a dream some of us had.

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I knew There was milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges, too And the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses Oh, won't you stay We'll put on the day And we'll talk in present tenses

Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got til it's gone. The day Paradise put up a parking lot!

Oh I wish I had a river to skate away on.

Caught in my struggle for higher achievements, And my search for love that don't seem to cease.

I'm porous with travel fever But you know I'm so glad to be on my own Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger Can set up trembling in my bones. I know no one's going to show me everything We all come and go unknown Each so deep and superficial Between the forceps and the stone.

You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining.

Augustine, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are confessional writers and all three make me sick. I have nothing in common with them.

You know that it never has been easy Whether you do or do not resign Whether you travel the breadth of the extremities Or stick to some straighter line.

I like to move around. I travel. I've driven across country by myself.

They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum.

Musically, I don't think I'd ever dry up. I trust my musical invention.

In search of love and music My whole life has been Illumination Corruption And diving, diving, diving, diving, Diving down to pick up every shiny thing