Neil Diamond quotes:

Chelsea Morning is a great Joni Mitchell song and I guess I'm partial to her lyrics because they show me a slightly different perspective on life.

I used to go to my kids' soccer games and I was the only parent who wasn't screaming, because I'd have to do a show that night. It was hard. Moms and dads get more emotional at those soccer and Little League games than at a professional game.

I'm throwing myself back in because I like being married. I don't want to end this whole fabulous journey alone. I want someone by my side who I love and who loves me. I've finally found somebody who's up to the task of being my wife, because I'm very high maintenance.

Song Sung Blue took a lot of compressing and refining, and it has one of my favorite lyrics.

I came back to performing with a different attitude about performing and myself. I wasn't expecting perfection any more, just hoping for an occasional inspiration.

Brooklyn is not the easiest place to grow up in, although I wouldn't change that experience for anything.

When you're on a merry-go-round, you miss a lot of the scenery.

Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory.

My voice is unadorned. I don't try for perfection. I try to be honest and truthful and soulful with the voice I have. If I make mistakes in notes, or there are cracks in notes, I don't fix them. That's the way it is.

Crackling Rosie make me smile. God, if it lasts for an hour that's alright, to set the world right. Find us a dream that don't ask no questions.

I like having a woman. I like having someone to come home to, to make all of the hard work feel worth it. I need someone with me. And I want someone.

Performing is the easiest part of what I do, and songwriting is the hardest.

If it can affect me, if it has meaning to me, if I feel I can do it well, I will do it and record it and thats why I recorded these songs.

I had always sung in my dad's shop. I worked there after school, and I'd be singing along with the top-40 records of the day.

Drop your shrink and stop your drinkin', crunchy granola's neat.

Fencing made me feel for the first time like a winner.

September morn Do you remember how we danced that night away Two lovers playing scenes from some romantic play September morning still can make me feel this way.

It was a real hand-to-mouth existence in those early days - I'd have whatever dry cereal there was in the house for breakfast, 30 cents to spend on lunch and a hot dog for dinner. I did that for years. So there was definitely a hunger in me, of various kinds, to succeed.

Well, I loved singing in the chorus, and there was some connection for me between gospel and choral music.

Money talks, but it don't sing and dance, and it don't walk. And long as I can have you here with me, I'd much rather be, forever in blue jeans.

I get good vibes from people. There is a thread of DNA that runs from the days that I was a young teenager to these days. It feels good to go back there.

Melinda was mine 'til the time that I found her holding Jim, loving him.

I don't feel I have to write deep and meaningful songs; they can be light and meaningless. It has to do with the place I am in my life, a really good place.

He aint heavy, he's my brother.

I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.

I'm lucky. Hard work is the key, but luck plays a part.

I guess I haven't gotten over being lost, a wandering gypsy.

I've finally found somebody who's up to the task of being my wife, because I'm very ... high maintenance.

Money talks but it can't sing and dance and it don't walk.

Because my musical training has been limited, I've never been restricted by what technical musicians might call a song.

The man in between waits between the two, not hearing the lie and not seeing the true. Unknowing what is and denying what seems, and there he will sleep, the man in between.

I fell in love with folk music at Surprise Lake Camp. It was the songs of Woody Guthrie and the Weavers.

Love is still a simple act of faith, and a faithful heart is always worth the wait.

The cardinal rule for any performer is that they should know themselves before they enter the spotlight, and I didn't. I was just Neil and I did what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to get married, so I got married. I was supposed to get a job, so I looked for work.

I've looked at photographs of myself during concerts and it sometimes looks as if I'm in a fencing move, with a guitar in my hands instead of a sword.

When I need my wife or when I need companionship or someone to talk to, I need it, like, now. So my wife will have to give up whatever she's doing at that moment to tend to my needs. And, in the same way, I would tend to hers. That's not such an easy thing to do.

I didn't want to repeat my mistakes so I stopped, took some time out and started having therapy. My songs were bringing up feelings inside of me I didn't really understand, so I wanted to understand where they were coming from to help me be a better person and a better songwriter.

It's very difficult for me to say 'I love you' but to sing 'I love you' for me is easier.

Songs are life in 80 words or less.

Acting is a specific discipline. Just because you can sing doesn't mean you have the sensitivities of being an actor.

All my songs are based on melody, which is retrieved from my Jewish heritage. Melody will always exist no matter what the rhythmic changes there are.

As a songwriter there's nothing more exciting than the unknown, the new and different.

As I said before, stones to me is meant things that hurt people, things that cause pain and thats what this song is about.

Be...As a page that aches for a word Which speaks on a theme that is timeless

Being lost is worth the being found.

But you make me sing like a guitar humming . . .

Don't need to say please to no man for a happy tune.

Each acoustic guitar has its own character and personality. On a particular day, I might pick one up and start noodling around, looking for some emotional content in the chords.

Free, only want to be free, we huddle close, hang on to a dream....

Home's the most excellent place of all.

I am, I cried. I am, I said. And I am lost.

I am, I said to no one there and no one heard at all, not even a chair.

I Am... I Said is a very complicated song and its complicated probably because my feelings were very complicated when I wrote it.

I communicate with fans on Twitter. I enjoy the ability to impulsively write something and ship it out to the fans and fellow tweeters out there.

I couldn't resist. I went over and joined in, and we just sang the song together, ... They had no idea that I had written it, or who I was. I was just some weird guy who wanted to join in on the singing.

I definitely don't feel like I'm 71. I feel like I did when I was - between 30 and 40. The body ages. The mind doesn't.

I do have a large audience overseas, and I want to continue to be an international artist.

I don't like all of the music to be serious and deadly.

I don't pamper my voice. It's part of my body. If my body is rested and healthy, my voice is rested and healthy.

I followed all life's pleasures wherever they would lead, but someone I can treasure is all I really need.

I got worries by the ton, getting cancer's only one. Over taxed and alimonied, tired of eating fried baloney.

I had always held everything in before.

I have a lot of confidence, but little Self-Esteem. This has given me a tremendous creative spark because it forced me to keep proving myself.

I may have a little bit of a talent for music, but I've learnt to tap into my own self when I write. When I put the drill bit inside my heart, sometimes I come up with something light and frothy, sometimes with something deep and painful, but it's great to connect with the audience.

I still need practice in enjoying the fruits of success.

I suppose that being moved to write a song is more applicable to me, I have to be moved, I have to have a reason to write a particular song.

I thank the Lord for the night time.

I think I need to be married. Having a wife and family makes some sense out of all that I do, because I can't make any sense out of 20,000 adoring fans watching me for two hours.

I think probably Australians have just a little more taste than most people.

I think that if I have one hope, 1 ambition, 1 aspiration for the next 4 or 5 years it would be that I can improve as a writer and just be able to say more of what I want to say throught the music.

I thought love was more or less a giving thing. Seems the more I gave, the less I got.

I was always interested in science, and pre-med was arespectable thing to do while I ursued my songwriting.

I was always trying to win the world, but somewhere I lost you.

I'm not really comfortable in any one spot.

I'm trying to find the truth in myself. To play somebody else doesn't interest me. It's not the focus of my life. I can get through most scenes and do the acting part of it, and at best, I'm going to be mediocre.

It's much harder to play myself. If I ever do a movie again, it'll be a singing serial killer.

I've always accepted some kind of deity, especially as a songwriter.

I've found for the last couple of years that the things that I can become most deeply involved with are songs that reflect my real feelings about things and so that what I've been writing about.

I've spent my whole life trying to find out who I am, so I could express that through the music.

Love never doubts or suffers or cries. Love shows no fear, love tells no lies.

Love on the rocks, ain't no surprise. Pour me a drink and I'll tell you some lies.

Maybe tonight, maybe tonight by the fire all alone you and I. Nothing around but the sound of heart and your sighs.

My music is in young people's lives because it's so much a part of their parents' lives.

My peers accept me and respect me, and that's enough.

My writing is different. I think it's better. I think it's deeper. But, strangely enough, it covers a lot of the old ground. Maybe it says it in a more sophisticated way ... but I [have written] about basically the same subjects over the years.

Nothing is sadder than love left unheard.

Of all the songs that I've written since I was 15 or 16, every song is different every song is special, it happens in a different way and I like that.

Pride is the chief cause in the decline in the number of husbands and wives.

Shame, it comes in every size, touches many lives, knocks on many doors.

She got the way to move me, Cherry, she got the way to groove me.

Shilo, when I was young, I used to call you name.

Some are born who never need them, Others still who never read them, signs.

Songs are so all-encompassing; they're the joys and sorrows and pacing of life.

The art of love is who you share it with.

The lyrics aren't simple, either. They're extremely difficult because I'm trying to say complicated things in as few words as possible.

The main objective in any song, the songs that I write, has always been that it reflect the way I feel, that it touch me when I'm finished with it, that it moves me, that it can take me along with it and involve me in what its saying.

The music is key. It has the power to transport you. I go from being a slightly insecure, shy kind of a person offstage, to this super-confident, motivated, entity onstage.

The truth always stays the same.

Then come and as we lay, beside this sleepy glade, there I will sing to you my Longfellow serenade.

There's a mystery to writing, and you don't really know where most of it comes from.

Touch a man who can't walk up right, and that lame man, he's gonna fly.

Very often the music comes first.

Well, I Am... I Said was a very difficult song, very difficult because I really had to spend a lot of time thinking about what I was before the song was written.

When I am not writing, I'm dying.

When I first started, I worked with three chords in every bar, but I found that tied me down - I'm not a chord-change writer, I'm a songwriter.

When I need my wife or when I need companionship or someone to talk to, I need it, like, now. So my wife will have to give up whatever she's doing at that moment to tend to my needs. And in the same way, I would tend to hers. That's not such an easy thing to do.

When love is unkind, it is not love anymore.

While the sun God will may your day, sing as a song in search of a voice that is silent, and the one God will make for your way.

Worse than bad reviews is to be ignored.

You can't plan to write a great song. It just happens to you. It drops in your lap. It's the same thing with a woman.

You have to go out there and give a piece of yourself -- your life, your soul. And you better give the audience everything you can -- physically, emotionally, musically. Then maybe they'll accept you and give you a standing ovation at the end.

You like to think that it's something you created, but secretly you know that you had some kind of help, or somebody gave this to you.

You're alive, you might as well be glad.

Hands, touching hands, reaching out, touching me, touching you.

Songwritng is what I do.

Whatever success I've had so far has been assimilated into my body and mind.

Over the years, you grow up, you mature and you see things in a different way, and it's reflected in the writing.