Joni Mitchell Quotes (44 Quotes)

I've looked at life from both sides now From win and lose and still somehow It's life's illusions I recall I really don't know life at all.

I have one piece of music, since 1997, and I don't see it having lyrics. Where does it go in this world? So I haven't recorded it.

No one likes to have less than they had before. That's the nature of the human animal.

The more decadent a culture gets, the more they have a need for what they don't have at all, which is innocence, so you end up with kiddie porn and a perverse obsession with youth.

At the point where I'm trying to force something and it's not happening, and I'm getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go and pick up the guitar.

You know, Neil Young is singing Rock n' roll will never die, and Neil never rocked and rolled in his life. I mean, he rocked, but he didn't roll. He has got no swing in him.

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels The dizzy dancing way you feel As every fairy tale comes real I've looked at love that way.

This is a nation that has lost the ability to be self-critical, and that makes a lie out of the freedoms.

Do you see how you hurt me, baby So I hurt you too. Then we both get so blue. I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, looking for the key to set me free.

They paved paradise And put up a parking lot, With a pink hotel, A boutique, and a swinging hot spot.

Not to dismiss Gershwin, but Gershwin is the chip; Ellington was the block.

I want to have fun. I want to shine like the sun. I want to be the one that you want to see. I want to knit you a sweater. I want to write you a love letter. I want to make you feel better. I want to make you feel free.

I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?

You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining.

Paul Simon started piling up a lot of words, more than the bar could handle, and I stopped!

Ira Gershwin, shame on him. I mean, some of the writing.

There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said.

Back then, I didn't have a big organization around me. I was just a kid with a guitar, traveling around. My responsibility basically was to the art, and I had extra time on my hands. There is no extra time now. There isn't enough time.

We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn't like. It has no resemblance to democracy.

We are stardust, we are golden, and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Oh, the jealousy, the greed is the unraveling. It's the unraveling and it undoes all the joy that could be.

You have this mounting aggressive ignorance with the rabbit's foot of their particular religion. You don't really have any kind of spiritual law, just a kind of a rabid mental illness. The songs are a little slice of life.

When you reach that kind of successful pinnacle, it is the nature of the business and the press and everything that they go about tearing you down.

The Beginning of Survival is my best album. I am very proud of it, and I am surprised at it, too. I thought some of Travelogue was a little heavy, but I don't think this is heavy.

Buddy Holly and the early rock 'n' roll was no lighter than the way I play. It's very minimal.

I assume there must be some kind of genetic thrust. My two grandmothers were very different, but both of them were frustrated musicians.

We managed to put together a compilation that had some creativity to it. In the meantime I was listening to the free radio stations and I noticed that during their war coverage they were playing these songs born out of the Vietnam War that were all critical of the soldiers.

I remember that time you told me, you saidLove is touching souls. Surely you touched mine 'Cause part of you pours out of me In these lines from time to time. You're in my blood like holy wine, You taste so bitter and so sweet.

Nobody understood The Reoccurring Dream, but after September 11, when we were coerced to do a national duty and go out and shop, surely people could begin to see what I was getting at.

Everyone I know has attention deficit, and they say it with great pride. It's a bad time to be right.

I hate show business.

I learned a woman is never an old woman.

There was this mountain village in Russia where my music was getting in on some German radio station. I remember this because music used to get up to Saskatchewan from Texas. Late at night after the local station closed down.

You're in my blood like holy wine, You taste so bitter and so sweet. I could drink a case of you darling Still I'd be on my feet. I would still be on my feet.

My name had gone stale, and no matter how progressive I got, it was my time to die.

And the seasons, they go round and round, And the painted ponies go up and down. We're captive on the carousel of time.

I think I would go further into fine arts, I think, if I were to continue.

You know that it never has been easy; Whether you do or do not resign; Whether you travel the breadth of the extremities; Or stick to some straighter line.

I can't remember anything I ever wrote.

When you're trying to pass on the best of the stuff you're culling to what should be a hungry culture but you have it diminished... that's kind of disappointing.

Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.

Sorrow is easy to express and so hard to tell.

With a painting, you don't have to go back and paint it again.

I've got 50 different tunings in the guitar.