Quotes About Process

I don't think I'm a great songwriter, but I think I've learned a lot about it, and I don't think there's any one way to do it. I don't think I can control it at all. I can just kind of hope that it happens.

I'm not a natural songwriter.

I've often said to young songwriters when they want to write with me, 'Let's take a stab at ten songs, and we might get one really good one.'

If anyone asks me about songwriting, I guess I'd say that you just gotta do it.

Isolation is a big part of songwriting.

We're always writing music no matter what. And we're not always acting - we have months off. But we never take a break from songwriting.

For me, songwriting is something like breathing: I just do it. But that doesn't mean you're fantastic.

I enjoy songwriting. It's slow-motion improvising.

Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control.

And I look forward to the time when I can become more indulgent with my songwriting. But this band is a family, and it's a process that we have to grow with together.

I found songwriting really hard at first, but after a while it was actually very easy. I wrote about everyday stuff.

I found songwriting really hard at first, but after a while it was actually very easy.

I draw the line at letting people into my songwriting cave. To me, that's where the alchemy happens and where the mystery is.

It all comes together. It's - that's the way it's always worked for me with songwriting.

There's this existential argument that comes in, at some point, when you're over-thinking the songwriting process. There's no guarantee that the more time you spend or the more you concentrate on certain aspects that that's going to produce a better result, especially in the arts.

When I make albums, I do a lot of songwriting but not necessarily a whole album.

Even though, theoretically, being a composer and being a songwriter are the same thing, in my brain, they are completely different. When I am in my composing mode, I go into my studio and turn that part of my brain on like a faucet. And when I finish, I turn it off. But with songwriting, that process is much more elusive.

I've never been one to indulge in out and out depression when it comes to songwriting.

It's such a weird process, songwriting, because you just have to feel it. There's no right or wrong melody or lyric.

My favorite way to get into the songwriting process is to get into the studio, and then usually, they play a loop of four chords, or something, or guitar, and then I just start singing.

When Sonic Youth wrote music, we would rehearse for months before anybody heard anything.

Sonic Youth has a very democratic process for the most part. It almost doesn't matter who brings in an initial idea; everything gets worked over by the band and kind of co-written by everyone in the end because everyone's ideas get contributed to it.

Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.

My own image of my work is that I no sooner settle into something than a break occurs. These breaks are always painful and depressing but despite them I see that there's a consistency that holds out, but is hard to define.