James Taylor Quotes (60 Quotes)


    Knowing when to quit is probably a very important thing, but I just am not ready.

    I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others.


    Most of the people who go to the polls in this election already know how they are going to vote.

    Once you get that two-way energy thing going, everyone benefits hugely.


    I'm beginning to warm to the prospect of it. I've always liked the idea of other people singing my songs.


    It's been a number of years since I worked solo. That's all I used to do, and that's how I started out. So it's nice to get back to that every once in a while.

    Somehow it helps just to take something that's internal and externalize it, to see it in front of you.

    That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind.

    I've always worked all my life and now I need a hand, not a handout. That's why I'm here.

    Sobering up was responsible for breaking up my marriage. That's what it couldn't stand.

    It is the most delightful thing that ever happens to me, when I hear something coming out of my guitar and out of my mouth that wasn't there before.

    We all have to face pain, and pain makes us grow.

    So we talked about the tune, we talked about the lyric and about how we would divide it up and approach it. There certainly wasn't time to say, 'By the way, do you remember 1965, McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts What was that all about'


    I don't take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.

    Americans work a long away ahead of themselves because of the size of the place. To make any impact at all you have to promote yourself with live performances ages before a release.

    I think that we're all totally isolated beings and always will be.

    That one inning killed us it killed us bad. We just have to step it up in the future and make the easy plays when we have them and not get rattled. One innocent play started it and it kind of snowballed from there. Suddenly we couldn't make a play.

    I am myself for a living. I don't animate a character.

    We are part of the community, and we need investigation to be proactive, to look to the outside, to encourage people to come up with bright ideas.

    I would advise you to keep your overhead down avoid a major drug habit play every day and take it in front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.

    I believe 100 percent in the power and importance of music.

    If you think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.

    I've seen fire and I've seen rain, I've seen sunny days I thought would never end, I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I always thought I'd see you again

    If the gig's going really well, I'm incredibly happy on stage and really feel good about my life and things.

    Time will take your money, but money won't buy time.

    Our needs are so big, and our vision is so small. I'd just hate to see the community utilize its waterfront in a way that would preclude jobs.

    You have to choose whether to love yourself or not.

    It is a process of discovery. It's being quiet enough and undisturbed enough for a period of time so that the songs can begin to sort of peek out, and you begin to have emotional experiences in a musical way.


    He doesn't have the same kind of support community that I do in maintaining a career. He feels as though he's lived long enough and done well enough to be of service, and more than anything else that's the way he defines success. It's not so much his business as his work.

    Won't you look down upon me, Jesus. You gotta help me make a stand,

    Being on a boat that's moving through the water, it's so clear. Everything falls into place in terms of what's important and what's not.

    I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.

    The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.

    It's hard to find a way forward. When you're 18 it happens in huge chunks every day, but after 20 years, growth is much more costly.

    There'll come a writing phase where you have to defend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.

    There's been plenty of adversity, starting the moment he was born. He had a respiratory crisis, and it was touch and go for a week whether he would survive. I think ever since, you can feel this pulse in the guy, an almost physical enthusiasm.


    I often go out on the road without an album, ... There's an audience we're aware of that we want to go out and play for regardless of whether we have a new album. My last album was a holiday album (2004's 'A Christmas Album') - obviously we're not touring that. Albums come along when they're ready. I'm not on any particular schedule.

    I'm very unstable; there's no stability in a musician's life at all. You live on a bus or on the road hand to mouth and you don't know where your money's coming from.

    I don't think anyone really says anything new.

    I tend to like things that I've written recently because it's fresh but then there are things that I think really turned out well. I'd say I'm still pretty proud of Sweet Baby James.

    People should watch out for three things: avoid a major addiction, don't get so deeply into debt that it controls your life, and don't start a family before you're ready to settle down.


    If you're an addict, it controls your life and your life becomes uncontrollable. It's boring and painful, filling your system with something that makes you stare at your shoes for six hours.

    Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have made a lot of difference to my audience that I'm as bald as a billiard ball!

    I think people are isolated because of the nature of human consciousness, and they like it when they feel the connection between themselves and someone else.


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