Great songs don’t grow on trees, yet lots of songs have been written on great trees

About one or two songs per record is me doing a little bloodletting.

I’m not the best singer, but I like the way I sing my songs.

Kids know me from their Grease DVD, so they instantly respond. You can hear a pin drop when I do my old songs.

Be sure that your praise songs are numbered higher than your sorrowful dirges and your utmost hope, firmer than your woeful regrets. Be positive.

I always wanted a guitar. I always wanted to be a cowboy singer because I also listened to Hank Williams, and he would always sing these neat romantic songs.

The way I choose to show my feelings is through my songs.

Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope.

What I’m most pleased about is that there’s no particular decline. The songs I wrote 40 years ago are no worse and no better – there’s a consistency.

Some songs are never just ordinary songs, they become the memories you collect in your life.

Like a comet pulled from orbit, As it passes a sun. Like a stream that meets a boulder, Halfway through the wood. Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better? But because I...

A lot of rap songs don’t usually have a lot of melody per se.

I tend to name albums after one of the songs.

That’s where it begins and ends for me and these songs were the ones that touched me the deepest. It was like I was laying hold of some part of me that I didn’t even...

There are as many ways to write songs as there are songs.

But Dad and I are the only father-and-daughter acts who have both had No. 1 songs in England.

I find the songs and dances in Hindi films fascinating, and I know I will do justice to them, as I am a trained dancer.

So don’t fall in love, there’s just too much to lose; if you’re given the chance then I’m begging you choose to walk away, walk away, don’t let it get you. I can’t bear to...

The shadow of a character is defined by its maker…while a heroine is personified by its actions and relatability. So writers can create a world with a heroine that has impact and finish with everessence...

They can sonically sound like me, but nobody’s ever gonna be able to write songs like T-Pain. There’s only one of those.

Hair is gray and the firers are burning. So many dreams on the shelf. You say I wanted you to be proud of me. I always wanted that myself.

Are we just dreamingIn the city that never sleeps?Cause I can’t be seeingWhat my eyes tell me.

I’ve got a collection of songs that I’ve had, I keep adding to and they’re all great American composers. I wanted to showcase American composers and I’ve done that on a lot of my records...

The best songs I write in 20 minutes.

Can’t fight the moment of truth in your lies.

I’ve written lots of songs on the piano. My mother had a piano and it was the first instrument I played.

Para mentiras las de la realidadpromete todo pero nada te da,yo nunca de mentímás que por verte reir.Menos piadosas que las del corazónson las mentiras de la diosa razón,yo solo te conté media verdad al...

Oh it only took me 4 songs to get here! that’s not to long!

Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don’t care if they lose it; they’ll...

I like to sing covers of songs that are at the extreme ends from what I usually listen to.

I only record songs that I really like and believe in and can sing with conviction.

I think I write very good songs. But I don’t know if anybody could record my songs with as much fervor. They sound good sung by me, and they especially sound good with my band.

I’ve always written songs since I was a kid – always.

I’m not doing contemporary songs unless something comes along that really knocks my socks off.

I will be singing primarily all the songs from the musicals that I have been in from over the years.

Selfishly, I make music for me. I like to make music. I like looking for songs. I like working with interesting musicians. I like producing records. It’s something I will always do.

I’m sick of being self-referential. I don’t want to do any more songs that can be accused of being personal.

People naturally change a lot during their 20s, so my songs reflect that progression.

Most of my songs are about insensitivity of some kind.

On ‘Heartbreaker,’ I had to sing those songs. I drank the way I did those songs. I ate the way I did those songs. I communicated the way I did those songs. With ‘Gold,’ I...

Where I’m fortunate and why I think I’ve thrived and survived, through the not having albums out every year-and-a-half, is not taking the songs lightly and trying to make sure I’ve got consistency.

Treat a sick man with the medicine and a sad man with the music.

My mum’s family would all get together, with guitars, harmonica, mandolins and upright bass and play old blues and folk songs. That was normal to me.

I am deeply devoted to the 27,000 songs I can take anywhere on my iPod Classic as well as the exquisitely engineered MacBook Air on which I typed this column.

I said, other people can write songs, let’s see if I can. So the first 400 or 500 wound up on the floor somewhere. Then I wrote one called Melissa.

All those songs reflect all the people that live within me.

I wanted to write songs that would play themselves on stage, songs that sweep you through their current.

Deana Carter sings about it. Lady Antebellum sings about it. Eric Church. Gosh, not just country artists. Katy Perry. Everybody has a song about it because everybody’s been through it. You find that person at...

The way you look for songs, you find yourself looking for little signals and clues about life and how things are.

I would rather put out two year-defining songs a year than flood the market with eight or nine songs.