Quotes by Barry Mann

• It's very important, at least for me and for Cynthia, to get outside input.
• Cynthia's lyrics always expressed the feelings people felt but they couldn't express themselves.
• I also used to work in the Catskill Mountains as a bus boy, and I performed in talent shows.
• I get a different kind of lyric from someone else that might make me go in a different musical direction.
• I know at the beginning of our careers, my wife and I were gut wrenchingly competitive.
• I looked through our catalog year by year, and I saw that there were pockets of time when we wrote some terrific songs. Then all of a sudden, we'd go for another two or three months and there weren't great songs.
• I quit college. I was studying architecture for about a year.
• I think if one wants to be in a continual state of insanity one should stay married to that writing partner.
• I've written songs sober and I've written songs high.
• If we didn't get the record, we didn't exist.
• If we were the team that won out, then life was good and we felt that we were worth something.
• A guitar riff played on a piano doesn't come close to the purity of it being played on a guitar but I faked it enough to get by.
• It's very hard to teach someone how to write a song if to begin with there's no creative crop to harvest.
• I think that most writers who wait until they're inspired to write are just waiting for the fear to subside.
• One other thing, if it's possible, as songwriters, you should also develop yourself as record producers.
• Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability.
• The real danger of writing a great song when you're on something is that it might get you thinking that the only way to repeat that is by only writing when you're high.
• There's so much fear involved in trying to do something you don't know how to do that drugs and alcohol can become a big part of your life if you have an addictive personality or are very unsure, which most songwriters are.
• We became the songs we wrote.
• We lived, ate, and breathed pop songs.
• We've written something like 900 songs in all.
• You can get stale writing with each other for a while.
• You have certain writing tools but generally creating something from nothing makes one quite mad and Cynthia and I are quite mad you know.
• You have to be very brave in that first writing session.
• You're going to have more rejection than acceptance.
• You've got to really be able to accept the rejection.
• It's amazing how a competitive nature can turn a negative into something positive.
• If I waited for inspiration every time I sat down to write a song I probably would be a plumber today.