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.
James Taylor
The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.
Though 'Fire and Rain' is very personal, for other people it resonates as a sort of commonly held experience... And that's what happens with me. I write things for personal reasons, and then in some cases it... can be a shared experience.
Time will take your money, but money won't buy time.
I find it a lot healthier for me to be someplace where I can go outside in my bare feet.
I was a huge Beatles fan. We could talk about who I listened to growing up and what my sources were, but certainly the Beatles were a late, important resource for me, and I just took my guitar and a handful of songs, and I decided, well, I'll just go over and travel around Europe and see what comes of it.
I collect hats. That's what you do when you're bald.
I am myself for a living. I don't animate a character.
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.
I played the cello from when I was ten, and then I bought a guitar from the father of some friends of mine and played that for a while. And then when I was fourteen or so, I bought a guitar - a real nice one - in Durham, North Carolina, that I worked with up until I was about twenty-five.
I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others.
I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about black music, about soul music.
One of my earliest memories was me singing 'Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin' at the top of my voice when I was seven. I got totally carried away. My grandmother, Sarah, was in the next room. I didn't even realise she was there. I was terribly embarrassed.
Music is my living. I enjoy selling my music.
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.
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 don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.
Ireland, Italy and Brazil are the most musical places for me. They're extremely musical cultures and anything you pitch they basically catch.
Television news is now entertainment, and the stories are being written by the people that have a special interest in them.
To me, very much of what is artistic is people's very creative and inventive ways out of impossible situations.
Music is like a huge release of tension.
Performing is a profound experience, at least for me.
Bruce Springsteen's a rock star. Elton John is a rock star. I'm a folk musician. Honestly, I think that's true.
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.
When you write a song, it may come from a personal space, but it very seldom actually represents you. It comes out of a sort of mood of melancholy, somehow. It's almost theatrical.
That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind.
I don't think anyone really says anything new.
I was a functional addict.
I had a very moral upbringing, and spiritual in a sort of not very specific way.
The Beatles were a phenomenon, but they were also ordinary blokes like anyone else. I was lucky enough to see that side.
If the gig's going really well, I'm incredibly happy on stage and really feel good about my life and things.
I have a love-hate relationship with the Grammys because I don't see the music world as a competitive sport.
I'm looking forward to being able to retire from being a public figure and being able to afford to be myself!
I don't read music. I don't write or read music.
Performing is a profound experience, at least for me. It's not as if I sit down and play 'Fire and Rain' by myself, just to hear it again. But to offer it up... the energy that it somehow summons live takes me right back, and I do get a reconnection to the emotions.
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.
I sometimes wonder how many of these lifetime achievement awards you can accept before you have to do the decent thing and die.
We all have to face pain, and pain makes us grow.
Certain things in life are more important than the usual crap that everyone strives for.
Somehow it helps just to take something that's internal and externalize it, to see it in front of you.
It's a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you're being autobiographical. But it's what everyone wants - to get everyone's attention, to have your music make a living for you, to be validated in that way.
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.
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.
People have used my songs and guitar style to teach guitar for a long time.
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.
I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.
Once you get that two-way energy thing going, everyone benefits hugely.
Knowing when to quit is probably a very important thing, but I just am not ready.
I have a studio in a barn at home - we rehearse there, we film there and we record there. It's fun to hang out with my guys and see what comes out next.
I think that we're all totally isolated beings and always will be.
