Quotes from Jeff Tweedy

The creative state is the most important part. None of it means anything if you're not excited by the discovery of what you're making.

All of the ways I am exactly like Bob Dylan is, one time a biking accident changed my life. Not a motorcycle accident, like in 1966 when Dylan crashed his Triumph Tiger on a mountain road in upstate New York, broke some bones, and went into seclusion. I was on a Schwinn Stingray, so I wasn't "riding in the classic sense; I was pedaling.

It's just a matter of telling yourself that your creation is OK, no matter what it is.

I'm convinced the dreams we have for ourselves go unattained from a lack of permission more than any deficit in talent or desire. And I'm going to stress again that when I say "permission," I mean the permission we withhold or give ourselves to pursue those dreams.

I find it's almost impossible to put two words together and not find at least some meaning. We're conditioned to look for patterns and identify mysteries to solve much more than we are designed to dictate what we're searching for. I recommend allowing that natural curiosity and our sense-making brains to do their thing.

If a song is memory in some way, let's create a moment that you won't forget. There are lots of ways to do that

you will hear something that you want to keep. Or hear something that reminds you of something else. Songwriters are just people who have claimed those things—who give themselves credit. Who say they invented rock and roll. And you can do it, too. You just invented a song. You just invented music.

if you allow yourself the time and willingness to experiment, you will hear something that you want to keep. Or hear something that reminds you of something else. Songwriters are just people who have claimed those things—who give themselves credit. Who say they invented rock and roll. And you can do it, too. You just invented a song. You just invented music.

showing up with a reliably open heart and a will to share whatever spirit you can muster is what resonates and transcends technical perfection.

Stockpiling Words, Language, and Lyrics—doing exercises like freewriting, writing poems, refining, and revising, all of which I'll talk about in the next section Stockpiling Music, Songs, and Parts of Songs—making demo recordings, practicing, learning other people's songs, and writing parts for songs in progress Pairing Words and Music—writing lyrics to a melody and searching for matches between stockpiled demos and lyric sets, poems, and freewriting

inspiration is rarely the first step. When it does come out of the blue, it's glorious. But it's much more in your own hands than the divine-intervention-type beliefs we all tend to have about inspiration. Most of the time, inspiration has to be invited.

Sometimes it can take me a while to relearn my own songs, but I've gotten better over the years at keeping a record of the tunings I'm playing in and/or capo positions. But there are some songs from long ago that I've never been able to figure out. Songs that will never be finished

because I was a lazy idiot and didn't bother to write down the crazy cool tuning I invented. Lesson learned.

I think the disconnect is more related to the idea of "being" anything when it's the "doing" that's more rewarding. Being something isn't real in the same way that doing something can be real.

Failure can be a kind of pain that you shouldn't let go to waste, at least as long as you're in the proper space mentally. It will help you deal with rejection in a lot of other areas in your life.

It can be very daunting and upsetting when people realize that others are more talented than they are. But you have to work through that. You can't quit because there's a Beyoncé in the world.

Being willing to sound bad is one of the most important pieces of advice that I can give you. Writing a song will teach you that it's OK to fail. And more than that, that it's actually good to fail, and that you can come to appreciate the gifts of failure.

In the end, learning how to write songs is, in large part, about teaching yourself to fail and being OK with it. But it's also about searching for, finding, and sharing some truth.

Maybe it's a cliché, but you have to focus on verbs over nouns -- what you want to do, not what you want to be.

What you make of the song or what the world will make of it is of little concern when contrasted with the joy that I've talked about many times now—the joy of disappearing long enough to find something you didn't know you had inside you.

take the final necessary steps—arranging and recording—needed to dress my songs up enough to send them out into the world.

Even the most dismal and hopeless-sounding Wilco music, to my ears, has always maintained a level of hope and consolation.

I didn't want to admit that I was falling into a cliche.

We live in a connected world now. Some find that frightening. If people are downloading our music, they're listening to it. The internet is like radio for us.