In New York, the street adventures are incredible. There are a thousand stories in a single block. You see the stories in the people's faces. You hear the songs immediately. Here in Los Angeles, there are less characters because they're all inside automobiles.

Joni Mitchell

You York Ventures

I thrive on change. That's probably why my chord changes are weird, because chords depict emotions. They'll be going along on one key and I'll drop off a cliff, and suddenly they will go into a whole other key signature. That will drive some people crazy, but that's how my life is.

Joni Mitchell

Nature Life Change

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

Joni Mitchell

Sympathy Tell T

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.

Joni Mitchell

Mom Men Good

When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark.

Joni Mitchell

Time Art World

You wake up one day and suddenly realize that your youth is behind you, even though you're still young at heart.

Joni Mitchell

Art Youth Your

I see music as fluid architecture.

Joni Mitchell

Music Architecture Us

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

Joni Mitchell

Art Up T

Rachmaninoff made a musician out of me. His 'Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini' was the piece that sent me into raptures. It spoke to me. To me, it was a tender entreaty for the misunderstood.

Joni Mitchell

Music Us Understood

Fame is a series of misunderstandings surrounding a name.

Joni Mitchell

Understanding Understand UN

I heard someone from the music business saying they are no longer looking for talent, they want people with a certain look and a willingness to cooperate.

Joni Mitchell

Music Business Yin

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.

Joni Mitchell

War Who Way

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

Joni Mitchell

T Socks Sock

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

Joni Mitchell

Respect Nature Men

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

Joni Mitchell

Nature Than T

An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child.

Joni Mitchell

Unhappy UN T

I know my generation - a lot of them, they're getting old now, and they want to think back fondly, they want to kid themselves. A lot of them think, 'Yeah, we were the best.' That's the kiss of death. That's non-growth. And also that's very bad for the world.

Joni Mitchell

Death Yeah World

Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980.

Joni Mitchell

Up T Stupid

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.

Joni Mitchell

Art Yin Writing

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

Joni Mitchell

Freedom T Self-Critical

I sing my sorrow, and I paint my joy.

Joni Mitchell

T Sorrow Sing

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

Joni Mitchell

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.

Joni Mitchell

I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' He gets a bad rap; he's very misunderstood. He's a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers.

Joni Mitchell

The God of the Old Testament is the depiction of evil.

Joni Mitchell

My childhood was very difficult. I had every childhood disease and then some, but my parents didn't mollycoddle me. They left me to fight those battles on my own. I guess that was very Canadian, very stoic. But it's good. I had to become a warrior. I had to give up hope and find a substitute for hope that would be far more stable.

Joni Mitchell

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

Joni Mitchell

I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them.

Joni Mitchell

To enjoy my music, you need depth and emotionality.

Joni Mitchell

My family could only afford to get me the box of eight Crayola crayons, but I craved the one with all 24 colours. I wanted magenta and turquoise and silver and gold.

Joni Mitchell

I see bodies as individual things.

Joni Mitchell

I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead.

Joni Mitchell

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.

Joni Mitchell

I learned a woman is never an old woman.

Joni Mitchell

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

Joni Mitchell

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.

Joni Mitchell

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?

Joni Mitchell

In terms of fiction, I'd rather go out and have a good time than read a book about someone having a good or bad time.

Joni Mitchell

I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejected as well as movements that happened later.

Joni Mitchell

Augustine, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are confessional writers and all three make me sick. I have nothing in common with them.

Joni Mitchell

I came through folk music simply because it was easy to get into it.

Joni Mitchell

I'm irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep.

Joni Mitchell

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

Joni Mitchell

Van Gogh was impulsive.

Joni Mitchell

I certainly don't want to be an angry old artist.

Joni Mitchell

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

Joni Mitchell

Drag wasn't always counterculture.

Joni Mitchell

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

Joni Mitchell

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

Joni Mitchell

I see the entire world as Eden, and every time you take an inch of it away, you must do so with respect.

Joni Mitchell

In New York, the street adventures are incredible. There are a thousand stories in a single block. You see the stories in the people's faces. You hear the songs immediately. Here in Los Angeles, there are less characters because they're all inside automobiles.

Joni Mitchell