Joni Mitchell quotes:

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?

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.

I had made all these rules for myself: I'm not writing social commentary, I'm not writing love songs.

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.

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.

Everyone I know has attention deficit, and they say it with great pride. It's a bad time to be right.

Buddy Holly and the early rock 'n' roll was no lighter than the way I play. It's very minimal.

You have this mounting aggressive ignorance with the rabbit's foot of their particular religion. You don't really have any kind of spiritual law, just a kind of a rabid mental illness. The songs are a little slice of life.

My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I'm a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to me, 'Girl, you make me see pictures in my head!' and I took that as a great compliment. That's exactly my intention.

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.

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.

I conceived in art college at the age of 20, near the end of term.

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

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

I come from pioneer stock, developers of the West, people who went out into the wilderness and set up home with nothing but a pair of oxen.

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

An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child.

My first four albums covered the usual youth problems - looking for love in all the wrong places - while the next five are basically about being in your 30s.

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

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

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.

To enjoy my music, you need depth and emotionality.

America is in a runaway-train position and dragging all the world with it. It's grotesquely mentally ill.

Eventually, with success, I started to feel more and more isolated - like I didn't have a community of artists.

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

I'd had a rough childhood.

I believe that I am male and I am female.

With a painting, you don't have to go back and paint it again.

I couldn't see passion as a bad thing.

I'm a night owl.

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

I don't like being too looked up at or too looked down on. I prefer meeting in the middle to being worshiped or spat out.

I've got 50 different tunings in the guitar.

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.

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.

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

I always thought the women of song don't get along, and I don't know why that is.

I do have this reputation for being a serious person.

Back then, I didn't have a big organization around me. I was just a kid with a guitar, traveling around. My responsibility basically was to the art, and I had extra time on my hands. There is no extra time now. There isn't enough time.

We are stardustBillion-year old carbonAnd we've got to get ourselves back to the garden"

Abstract Expressionism was invented by New York drunks.

I used to be monastic, almost. Now I'm like a Tibetan that has discovered hamburgers and television. I'm catching up on Americana.

My individual, psychological descent coincided, ironically, with my ascent into the public eye.

When I was 19 I went to art school. I had six months of teaching myself to play baritone ukulele under my belt, so was sort of a novice folkie. ... I was singing folk songs at that time.

Rationally I have no hope, irrationally I believe in miracles.

Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl. Most of my best work came out of it.

I never really wanted to be a star. I didn't like entering a room with all eyes on me. I still don't really like the attention of a birthday party.

Not to dismiss Gershwin, but Gershwin is the chip; Ellington was the block.

Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air and feather canyons everywhere, I've looked at clouds that way.

We're captive on the carousel of time, we can't return we can only look behind.

And the seasons they go 'round and 'round And the painted ponies go up and down We're captive on the carousel of time We can't return we can only look behind From where we came And go round and round and round In the circle game.

A few drinks later you're not so choosy when the closing lights strip off the shadows on this strange new flesh you've found.

Drag wasn't always counterculture.

We managed to put together a compilation that had some creativity to it. In the meantime I was listening to the free radio stations and I noticed that during their war coverage they were playing these songs born out of the Vietnam War that were all critical of the soldiers.

I'm a fine artist working in a commercial arena, so that's my cross to bear

When you're trying to pass on the best of the stuff you're culling to what should be a hungry culture but you have it diminished... that's kind of disappointing.

The thing that started me painting originally was seeing Bambi when I was about nine. I was incredibly disturbed by the forest fire that killed Bambi's mother, and that distress gave me the impulse to create something, as a way of dealing with it.

Heaven's full of astronauts and the Lord's on death row.

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; hes very misunderstood. Hes a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers.

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels The dizzy dancing way you feel As every fairy tale comes real I've looked at love that way.

Some people are upset to see you doing ordinary things. Those people, if they were a celebrity, they would have an entourage.

Happiness is the best facelift.

I don't like to make fluffy little songs, but now I want to make some light songs.

I see music as fluid architecture.

We are stardust, we are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

My name had gone stale, and no matter how progressive I got, it was my time to die.

Keep a good heart. That's the most important thing in life. It's not how much money you make or what you can acquire. The art of it is to keep a good heart.

Some get the gravy, some get the gristle.

I like my freedom. I like to do my own grocery shopping.

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

Do you see how you hurt me, baby? So I hurt you too. Then we both get so blue. I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, looking for the key to set me free.

When I felt that fame, people were nosing me out, well I moved on. I used traveling names. Wigs, if necessary.

When I think of your kisses my mind see-saws.

There'll be icicles and birthday clothes And sometimes there'll be sorrow

But now old friends are acting strange They shake their heads, they say I've changed Well something's lost, but something's gained In living every day

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

Ira Gershwin, shame on him. I mean, some of the writing.

Morgellons is constantly morphing. There are times when it's directly attacking the nervous system, as if you're being bitten by fleas and lice. It's all in the tissue and it's not a hallucination. It was eating me alive, sucking the juices out. I've been sick all my life.

Something's lost, but something's gained, in living everyday.

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.

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.

When I came to California, it was the mecca of the world. Every young person on the planet wanted to be here.

In search of love and music My whole life has been Illumination Corruption And diving, diving, diving, diving, Diving down to pick up every shiny thing

I am as constant as a northern star

Just before our love got lost you said "I am as constant as a northern star" And I said, constantly in the darkness, Where's that at? If you want me I'll be in the bar.

I learned from admiration and osmosis.

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

White rhythm is waltzes, marches, and the polka. In Africa, rhythm is used for a celebratory groove, but white rhythm doesn't have such an enormous vocabulary of spirits. It's basically militant.

I've looked at life from both sides now...from win and lose, and still somehow it's life's illusions I recall I really don't know life at all.

I dreamed I saw the bombers riding shot gun in the sky and they were turning into butterflies above our nation.

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

Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm. They cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable, or mineral.

Unlike some of my peers, I haven't really hit a writer's block. When I hit a block I just paint, which is an old crop rotation trick.

Do you see how you hurt me, baby? So I hurt you too. Then we both get so blue. I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, looking for the key to set me free

I love you when I forget about me

We are stardustBillion-year old carbonAnd we've got to get ourselves back to the garden

I lost my daughter at 21. I had to give her up because I was broke, no place to take her, no money to take her. That was very traumatic.

If you're smart or rich or luckyMaybe you'll beat the laws of manBut the inner laws of spiritAnd the outer laws of natureNo man can

you dont know what you got till its gone

Will you take me as I am? Strung out on another man...California, I'm comin' home.

In search of love and music my whole life has beenIlluminationCorruptionAnd diving, diving, diving, diving down To pick up on every shiny thing

There was this mountain village in Russia where my music was getting in on some German radio station. I remember this because music used to get up to Saskatchewan from Texas. Late at night after the local station closed down.

Land of snap decisions, land of short attention spans, nothing is savored long enough to really understand.

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.

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.

I got in before SoHo was SoHo. It was just Little Italy when I was in there. It's still off the touristy track. It's just away from the Saturday action, the crowds and everything. It's too expensive. It's insane. You've got to be a billionaire to live on Manhattan now.

Once I got the open tunings for some reason, I began to get the harmonic sophistication that I heard that my musical fountain inside was excited by. Once I got some interesting chords to play with, my writing began to come.

My childhood was very difficult. I had every childhood disease and then some, but my parents didnt mollycoddle me. They left me to fight those battles on my own. I guess that was very Canadian, very stoic. But its 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.

Oh, the jealousy, the greed is the unraveling. It's the unraveling and it undoes all the joy that could be. .

Paul Simon started piling up a lot of words, more than the bar could handle, and I stopped!

Lord, there's danger in this land, you get witch hunts and wars when church and state hold hands.

I learned a woman is never an old woman.

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.

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.

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.

Van Gogh was impulsive.

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

I get the same charge from juxtaposition of colors as I do from juxtaposition of chords.

Fame is a series of misunderstandings surrounding a name.

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.