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.

James Taylor

Experience Write Wit

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

Water Very Through

The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.

James Taylor

Time Life Age

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.

James Taylor

Experience Write Wit

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

James Taylor

Time Money Your

I find it a lot healthier for me to be someplace where I can go outside in my bare feet.

James Taylor

Health Where T

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.

James Taylor

Travel Wing Win

I collect hats. That's what you do when you're bald.

James Taylor

You T Hen

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

James Taylor

T Self Myself

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.

James Taylor

Life Family Art

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.

James Taylor

Work Teen Car

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

James Taylor

Music Love Your

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.

James Taylor

Music Car Wing

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.

James Taylor

Car Way Voice

Music is my living. I enjoy selling my music.

James Taylor

Music Us Selling

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.

James Taylor

Time Music Experience

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

James Taylor

UN Tuna T

I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.

James Taylor

Music Art Write

Ireland, Italy and Brazil are the most musical places for me. They're extremely musical cultures and anything you pitch they basically catch.

James Taylor

Music You Us

Television news is now entertainment, and the stories are being written by the people that have a special interest in them.

James Taylor

Men Written Vision

To me, very much of what is artistic is people's very creative and inventive ways out of impossible situations.

James Taylor

Art Ways Way

Music is like a huge release of tension.

James Taylor

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me.

James Taylor

Bruce Springsteen's a rock star. Elton John is a rock star. I'm a folk musician. Honestly, I think that's true.

James Taylor

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.

James Taylor

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.

James Taylor

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

James Taylor

I don't think anyone really says anything new.

James Taylor

I was a functional addict.

James Taylor

I had a very moral upbringing, and spiritual in a sort of not very specific way.

James Taylor

The Beatles were a phenomenon, but they were also ordinary blokes like anyone else. I was lucky enough to see that side.

James Taylor

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

James Taylor

I have a love-hate relationship with the Grammys because I don't see the music world as a competitive sport.

James Taylor

I'm looking forward to being able to retire from being a public figure and being able to afford to be myself!

James Taylor

I don't read music. I don't write or read music.

James Taylor

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.

James Taylor

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.

James Taylor

I sometimes wonder how many of these lifetime achievement awards you can accept before you have to do the decent thing and die.

James Taylor

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

James Taylor

Certain things in life are more important than the usual crap that everyone strives for.

James Taylor

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

James Taylor

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.

James Taylor

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.

James Taylor

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.

James Taylor

People have used my songs and guitar style to teach guitar for a long time.

James Taylor

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.

James Taylor

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

James Taylor

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

James Taylor

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

James Taylor

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.

James Taylor

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

James Taylor