Cynthia Weil Quotes (38 Quotes)

You made a lot of mistakes, and you wrote a lot of crap. But it was all part of the learning process.

It was kind of like songwriter's boot camp. You had to produce. You had to produce fast. You had to learn.

But I must say I am happiest when something hits and I've written it with Barry. After all these years, I am still amazed by his genius.

That's what it is every time you walk into the room to write with someone new. It's like, oh god I have to take my clothes off 'my creative clothes' and let them see all of my flaws.

Barry is an incredible singer. He's even gotten better through the years.

So it was a good idea, and I learned that you just have to think faster than I was thinking and move more smartly than I was moving.

Some of these things I think are fated, or written in the stars, or it was the right place at the right time. I don't know why.

Sharing a triumph with someone you love is an incredible high.

She could only write with him at night and she was wasting her days just sitting around. So he thought I could write with her during the day. And that was Carole King.

We all have fertile creative periods and times when we can't figure out how we ever did it.

The difference is that when those barren periods occur no one's waiting for a record from us, so they don't even notice we've been gone.

I wanted to write for Broadway.

Then we kind of come back and appreciate that feeling of comfort that we do have together. It's like, oh now I can really let go.

That first writing session, what Dan Hill calls a creative blind date, is always a real challenge, and you bring that back to your partner when you return to writing with them.

I had written this really depressing ending in which when everybody says you get over things, and I thought I would love again, but wrong again.

We are the yin and the yang of the creative process.

There is the great creative part of it. The writing is the best part.

A lot of guys spend their lives saying no because it's an easier way to keep your job.

You just have to believe in yourself when you've got something, and just keep pounding on the door, because if you pound long enough, somebody is going to open it.

Actually I was writing with people that didn't get records.

My nature is to be linear, and when I'm not, I feel really proud of myself.

Even when I think I'm writing really young, they say it's too mature.

But I'm someone who the more afraid I am, the more I want to do it to get the fear over with.

I was always very linear. I had to be a good girl and finish verse one before I would allow myself to have the pleasure of verse two.

We were very fortunate to have been on the scene when we were.

The business today is completely different and it's very producer driven, so that a songwriter needs to have producing chops, be a singer/songwriter, or find a singer to develop.

Barry and I were in the middle of building a house, and I was in the midst of having a nervous breakdown, because that's what you do when you build a house.

Yes, mostly with Carole and Gerry, who were our best friends and our biggest competition. It was a very complex relationship.

We wrote what sounded good to us and hoped it would find a home.

I can't seem to write young enough anymore.

Although I like the work I've done in the past, I like what I'm writing now even more.

We have gone through some difficult times like everyone else and perhaps our working together and respecting each other's abilities, in addition to that little thing called love, helped us survive.

I was never conscious of any distractions other than hearing an incredible Goffin and King lyric and pushing harder to do better because they were so good..

The difference between us and the superstar singersongwriters is that they often become caught up in the recording process, which takes a long time.

The main reason he wanted to be a recording artist was because it gives you much more freedom in your writing. You only have to please the artist and the artist is you so you can be more daring and experimental.

On the other hand when you are someone who records their own songs you are basically stuck writing for one voice and for one style that can stifle you a bit. It's a real trade off.

. As far as his recording career, it almost seemed that it just wasn't meant to be and no matter what we did, it turned out wrong.

We somehow managed to live through the trends without succumbing to them. When disco came in, we survived without writing a disco song.