Joni Mitchell Quotes

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

They paved paradise and put up a parkin lot With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you got till it's gone

I learned a woman is never an old woman.

How does a person create a song? A lot of it is being open to encounter and to be in touch with the miraculous.

everything comes and goes; pleasure moves on too early and trouble leaves too slow

I didn't like the sound of people gasping at the mere mention of my name. It horrified me...

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

An artist needs a certain amount of turmoil and confusion.

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.

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.

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

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

I could drink a case of you.

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

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

He's swept with the broom of contempt and the rooms have an empty ring.

If I'm censoring for anyone, it's for my parents. They are very old-fashioned and moral people. They still don't understand me that well.

I sang in art school, just to get money to smoke.

I believe that I am male and I am female.

My husband had an education. He had a degree in Literature. I married into a camp of literary types.

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

you dont know what you got till its gone

Nobody understood The Reoccurring Dream, but after September 11, when we were coerced to do a national duty and go out and shop, surely people could begin to see what I was getting at.

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

You know that it never has been easy Whether you do or do not resign Whether you travel the breadth of the extremities Or stick to some straighter line.

But now it's just another show, you leave em laughing when you go. And if you care, don't let them know, don't give yourself away.

I'm your biggest fan, California, I'm coming home

I could drink a case of you, darlin'...and I would still be on my feet, yes I would still be on my feet.

All the news of home you read, more about the war and of bloody changes.

I do have this reputation for being a serious person.

Musically, I would never run dry. Any time I sit down to an instrument, I could write a song.

We love our lovin'....but not like we love our freedom.

I find a lot of poetry to be narcissistic.

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

During times like these, the wise are influential.

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

They'll crucify you for staying the same, and they'll crucify you for change. I'd rather be crucified for changing.

Laughing and crying, you know it's the same release.

We call for the three great stimulants of the exhausted ones, artifice, brutality, and innocence.

The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music.

My goal as a writer is more to comfort than to disturb.

When the spirit of child's play enters into the creative process, it's a wonderful force and something to be nurtured.

People used to say nobody can sing my songs but me, they're too personal.

Bob [Dylan] is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.

Fame is a series of misunderstandin gs surrounding a name.

Lazy reviewers look up other people's reviews and they write the same thing, so you get people writing crap based on crap.

When I began experimenting, people weren't ready for it. Once it's in its second and third generational stages, people can accept it.

You can give me 400,000 hostile people and I won't even break sweat. If you give me 200 adoring people, my mouth will dry out.

The land of litigation, the courts are like game shows. Take what's behind the curtain the jury cries.