Quotes About Inspiration

'Gorilla Man' is a composite of a few individuals, but the song itself was actually inspired by James Taylor. I spied his 'Gorilla' album laying on my floor and in some altered state, instantly started singing the chorus. It was fun to write. There's an old notebook with at least three more verses in it somewhere.

My father was a Baptist preacher, and he used to read the King James Bible to me every single morning. He made me memorize it and repeat verses at night before I went to sleep.

Dante Alighieri is a universal poet, and great creators, they are writing for everybody always. Every single verse is very moving, and the beauty - if we don't understand, we just stay listening to the sound and it's like hearing music.

I couldn't believe verse was supposed to be hard. It was a snap for me. I loved Shakespeare.

Some things remain fragments, just the lyrics and melodies or a line or two or a verse.

After I'd produced about two dozen pen and ink drawings, one evening I decided that they needed poems to accompany them. I still have no idea where that notion came from, but it took me about two hours to produce verses for these creatures.

I think there's one thing which distinguishes our art - we don't consider. We don't think. We write a little verse because it comes to us.

The record Clef and I did was just sitting there. So I said, Clef, I got a record, hit a verse on it. He just went in, messed around and ended up doing the hook too.

I heard Nirvana, and discovered that songs could be like poetry, but a little bit more refined: you didn't have to have 20 verses to get your point across.

I've written probably over 200 songs that have a verse and a chorus and that's it.

The only thing I can say that is wonderful about my mother is she forced me to learn three verses of the Bible every day of my life, and I've read the Bible now five times and it taught me the English language.

Believe it or not, I sold my first novel, 'Crank,' with only seventy-five pages complete. It was in verse then, and it was hard-hitting then.

Common would come to my house and give me a freestyle verse. I'd make a new beat for it and put it with something else. That's how I met Eminem - he came to my house back when he first started. He gave me a bunch of freestyles, and that's how we built a relationship. Everyone came to my house.

The wonderful 17th Century poet, Robert Herrick, wrote a poem entitled, 'To Live Merrily and to Trust to Good Verses.' Easy to say, Robert Herrick; not always easy to do. But it's a good slogan, I think.

Mostly the thought and the verse come inseparably. In my poem Poetics, it's as close as I come to telling how I do it.

I just start playing music and eventually I sing something, a line of a verse or a B section or a line of a chorus, and the line that I end up singing is related to the music I'm playing, if that makes any sense. And I go from there.

I never edit the songs that come out. And they tend to come out as a whole. The closest thing I have ever done to editing them is just cutting out a verse, but never rewriting lyrics.

I don't claim to be someone that knows every verse in the Bible. I wish I did. I truly do. It just means I need to spend more time in those pages.

The real challenge of writing songs isn't just writing a bunch of parts - like a verse, chorus, verse - but making something that flows together, that brings you back.

All I really want is a beat from Kanye West. I've met him, and I think he's real cool with us. If I get that beat, I'm going to rap the best verse I ever dropped - even if it's his worst beat.

Believe it or not, one of the first poets I was aware of was Yeats. I recited 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' at a verse speaking competition when I was eight or nine.

I just can't sit down and write three verses and a chorus and a bridge anymore. It just don't find it inspiring.

I will write a verse or a story and bring it into a songwriting session, because that's what's big in Nashville - the collaborative part of songwriting.

With 'Sierra,' this mean girl had all these kids bullying me - and I wrote the first verse and chorus the night before Tae and I came to Nashville.