Quotes from Jackson Browne

I taught myself to play the piano, because I wanted to play it.

It was a great time to be born, because I got to have my own publishing company right from the beginning, so I made more money than somebody would have doing what I did ten or fifteen years before.

I've been aware of the time passing by they say in the end it's the wink of an eye and when the morning light comes streaming in you'll get up and do it again

Coffee in the morning, cocaine afternoons.

I've also gotten to play in front of a million people in Central Park when there was a grass roots movement calling for nuclear disarmament - it was about 1982 - they called it Peace Sunday.

Oh Lord, are there really people starving still?

Lighten up while you still can, don't even try to understand. Just find a place to make your stand, and take it easy.

Don't confront me with my failures, I had not forgotten them.

I never was a very good singer.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, it could be that I've lost my way.

Say a prayer for the pretender, who started out so young and strong only to surrender.

When you've found another soul who see's in to your own...take good care of each other..and remember to be kind..

Like, What is the least often heard sentence in the English language? That would be: Say, isn't that the banjo player's Porsche parked outside?

Forget what life used to be, you are what you choose to be. It's whatever it is you see that life will become.

If someone said, 'You can go live in this little town in Costa Rica for a couple of weeks and all you've got to do is sing for us,' I would do that. That's more exciting to me than the prospect of going on some national tour, where you're going to play arenas or sheds every night, because of the crushing repetition of that kind of line.

So I had a couple of years of playing trumpet. I really enjoyed it, but it was not the kind of instrument you could whip out at a party. Let's face it.

I'd have to say that my favorite thing is writing a song that really says how I feel, what I believe - and it even explains the world to myself better than I knew it.

Now if I seem to be afraidTo live the life that I have made in songWell it's just that I've been losing so long.

Also, right at that particular time in the music business, because of people like the Beatles, people began owning their own publishing. I'll just say this really quickly - they used to divide the money for the music that was written in two, just equal halves.

When I really started liking music was when I could play some of it myself, and after a couple of years of playing folk music, I kinda rediscovered those hits that were on the radio all the time when I was a kid.

I told my father I wanted to play the banjo, and so he saved the money and got ready to give me a banjo for my next birthday, and between that time and my birthday, I lost interest in the banjo and was playing guitar.

I get some heat for what English people call 'overproduction.' I don't think my older stuff was overproduced, but I do think that sound has dated.

And my dad wanted me to play the trumpet because that's what he liked. His idol was Louis Armstrong. My dad thought my teeth came together in a way that was perfect for playing the trumpet.

I want to know what became of the changes we waited for love to bring/Were they only the fitful dreams of some greater awakening?