Quotes by James Taylor

• That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind.
• Once you get that two-way energy thing going, everyone benefits hugely.
• 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.
• Sobering up was responsible for breaking up my marriage. That's what it couldn't stand.
• Somehow it helps just to take something that's internal and externalize it, to see it in front of you.
• Music is like a huge release of tension.
• The secret of life is enjoying the passage of 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.
• Time will take your money, but money won't buy time.
• We all have to face pain, and pain makes us grow.
• When I cleaned up some 17 odd years ago, I felt terrible for about six months. The only thing that gave me any real relief was strenuous physical activity.
• Knowing when to quit is probably a very important thing, but I just am not ready.
• Certain things in life are more important than the usual crap that everyone strives for.
• You have to choose whether to love yourself or not.
• I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.
• Americans work a long away ahead of themselves because of the size of the place. To make any impact at all you have to promote yourself with live performances ages before a release.
• 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.
• 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 believe 100 percent in the power and importance of music.
• I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others.
• I can take criticisms but not compliments.
• I don't know much about God. But if everything does originate with God, then certainly songs do as well.
• I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.
• I don't think anyone really says anything new.
• 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 am myself for a living. I don't animate a character.
• It's probably foolish to expect relationships to go on forever and to say that because something only lasts 10 years, it's a failure.
• If you think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.
• 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.
• 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.
• I don't take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.
• 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.
• If you feel like singing along, don't.
• If the gig's going really well, I'm incredibly happy on stage and really feel good about my life and things.
• If I were to try to identify a turning point I'd say that was it - getting clean.
• I'm very unstable; there's no stability in a musician's life at all. You live on a bus or on the road hand to mouth and you don't know where your money's coming from.
• I was in chemical jail.
• I was a functional addict.
• I think that we're all totally isolated beings and always will be.
• 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.
• Life is like a guitar: you can either strum it casually, risking it all for an occasional good chord, or you can pick up the best songs hidden in each string with determination and a little bit of practice.