Joni Mitchell Quotes

I had made all these rules for myself: I'm not writing social commentary, I'm not writing love songs.

When I think of your kisses my mind see-saws.

You feed it all your woes, the ghostly garden grows.

Eventually, with success, I started to feel more and more isolated - like I didn't have a community of artists.

Some people are upset to see you doing ordinary things. Those people, if they were a celebrity, they would have an entourage.

Won't you stay We'll put on the day And we'll talk in present tenses

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

I create by feeling rather than by intellectualizing.

I dreamed I saw the bombers riding shot gun in the sky and they were turning into butterflies above our nation.

I met a redneck on a Grecian isle who did the Goat Dance very well.

Abstract Expressionism was invented by New York drunks.

Because Elvis gave 'em cars, you think I'm cheap.

People were very protective of me. Overly so. I was in the industry for a long time before I had any idea of what drugs people were doing.

I conceived in art college at the age of 20, near the end of term.

During times like these, the wise are influential.

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

To enjoy my music, you need depth and emotionality.

All I really, really want our love to do is to bring out the best in me and in you too.

If you're smart or rich or lucky
Maybe you'll beat the laws of man
But the inner laws of spirit
And the outer laws of nature
No man can

I could drink a case of you.

My husband had an education. He had a degree in Literature. I married into a camp of literary types.

It's life's illusions that I recall, I really don't know life at all

I could drink a case of you, darlin' ... and I would still be on my feet, yes I would still be on my feet ...

The land of litigation, the courts are like game shows. Take what's behind the curtain the jury cries.

When I began experimenting, people weren't ready for it. Once it's in its second and third generational stages, people can accept it.

Sex sells everything and sex kills.

I don't like being too looked up at or too looked down on. I prefer meeting in the middle to being worshiped or spat out.

I sang in art school, just to get money to smoke.

You've got to keep the child alive; you can't create without it.

I don't know how to sell out. If I tried to sell out I don't think I could.

We're captive on the carousel of time, we can't return we can only look behind.

I'm a very analytical person, a somewhat introspective person; that's the nature of the work I do.

You snipe so steady, you snub so snide, so rip and ready to diminish and deride.

An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child.

I'm your biggest fan, California, I'm coming home

Fame is a series of misunderstandings surrounding a name.

Unlike some of my peers, I haven't really hit a writer's block. When I hit a block I just paint, which is an old crop rotation trick.

I get the same charge from juxtaposition of colors as I do from juxtaposition of chords.

My individual, psychological descent coincided, ironically, with my ascent into the public eye.

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

Applause, applause, life is our cause.

Oh, I am a lonely painter / I live in a box of paints ...

I couldn't see passion as a bad thing.

Edith Piaf knocked my socks off when I was 8, but I didn't know what she was singing about.

Acid, booze, and ass, needles, guns, and grass, lots of laughs.

People used to say nobody can sing my songs but me - they're too personal.

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

I like to move around. I travel. I've driven across country by myself.

I am as constant as a northern star

When I came to California, it was the mecca of the world. Every young person on the planet wanted to be here.

My life came down to being a granny and watching a lot of television.

I paint my joy and I sing my sorrow.

A few drinks later you're not so choosy when the closing lights strip off the shadows on this strange new flesh you've found.

All my battles were with male egos. I'm just looking for equality, not to dominate. But I want to be able to control my vision.

Some get the gravy, some get the gristle.

you dont know what you got till its gone

Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl. Most of my best
work came out of it.

Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980.

Fold your fleet wings I have brought some dreams to share
A dream that you love someone
A dream that the wars are done

Love is touching souls.

Innocence is drowned in anarchy. The best lack conviction given time to think, and the worst are full of passion without mercy.

They'll crucify you for staying the same, and they'll crucify you for change. I'd rather be crucified for changing.

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.

I never really wanted to be a star. I didn't like entering a room with all eyes on me. I still don't really like the attention of a birthday party.

The songwriting was almost like something I did while I was waiting for my daughter to come back.

I come from pioneer stock, developers of the West, people who went out into the wilderness and set up home with nothing but a pair of oxen.

Well something's lost but something's gained in living every day.

Lazy reviewers look up other people's reviews and they write the same thing, so you get people writing crap based on crap.

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

She'll prophesy your death. She won't say when.

It's in my stars to invent; I was born on Madame Curie's birthday. I have this need for originals, for innovation. That's why I like Charlie Parker.

Daydreamin' drugs the pain of living.

Everybody's saying hell's the hippest way to go. Well, I don't think so, but I'm gonna take a look around it though.

The Hollywood sirens are shrieking, while down some search lit alley runs some lost belief.

My parents told me I'd point to a bed of flowers and say 'Pink. Pretty,' before I knew any other words.

Van Gogh was impulsive.

The bands and the roadies, love 'em and leave 'em. It's pleasure to try 'em, but trouble to keep 'em.

Heart and humor and humility, he said will lighten up your heavy load.

They won't give peace a chance, that's just a dream some of us had

I was anti-intellectual to the nth. Basically I liked to dance and paint, and that was about it.

But I have a tremendous will to live and a tremendous 'joie de vivre,' alternating with irritability.

My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species.

I didn't like the sound of people gasping at the mere mention of my name. It horrified me.

I do have this reputation for being a serious person.

I have always thought of myself as a painter derailed by circumstance.

I still believe in the power of the word, that words inspire.

So many things I would have done, but clouds got in my way.

Chase away the demons, and they will take the angels with them.

For the first time in my career, I'm working in a fine-arts arena, so I'm finally getting some intelligent reviews.

I believe that I am male and I am female.

I always thought the women of song don't get along, and I don't know why that is.

They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum.

I never loved a man as far as I could pitch my shoe.

Elusive dreams and vague desires fanned to fiery needs by deadly deeds of falling empires.

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

The thing that gave me the most pain in life, psychologically, and it gave me tremendous pain psychologically, is man's disrespect for nature.

We love our lovin' ... but not like we love our freedom.

What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song.

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.

I try not to steal from myself, but the modalities create similarities.