Best 120 quotes of James Taylor on MyQuotes

All it really needed was the proper point of view. No one's gonna bring me down.

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.

Baby booty, juicy fruity, truck stop cutie, road side beauty, I'm in love with you.

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.

Bruce Springsteen's a rock star. Elton John is a rock star. I'm a folk musician. Honestly, I think that's true.

But it's only after you've played it on the road 20 or 30 times that it becomes really finished and polished...and you realize what it means, and you get the phrasing right.

Certain things in life are more important than the usual crap that everyone strives for.

Creativity is the process that gives life to a new product.

Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose Won't you let me go down in my dreams?

Do me wrong, do me right, tell me lies, but hold me tight.

Don't be sad cause your sun is down, the night doesn't need your sorrow. Don't be sad cause the light is gone, just keep your mind on tomorrow.

Einstein said that he never could understand it all, the planets spinning in space, the smile upon your face.

['Fire and Rain'] is sort of almost uncomfortably close. Almost confessional. The reason I could write a song like that at that point, and probably couldn't now, is that I didn't have any sense that anyone would hear it. I started writing the song while I was in London...and I was totally unknown.... So I assumed that they would never be heard. I could just write or say anything I wanted. Now I'm very aware, and I have to deal with my stage fright and my anxiety about people examining or judging it. The idea that people will pass judgment on it is not a useful thought.

Global warming activists claim a serious public concern presently exists and the overwhelming majority of scientists agrees humans are creating a global warming crisis. The survey of AMS meteorologists, however, shows no such overwhelming majority exists. Indeed, to the extent we can assign a majority scientific opinion to whether all the necessary components of a global warming crisis exist, the AMS survey shows the majority does not agree humans are creating a global warming crisis.

He's halfway sick and halfway stoned. He'd sure like to kick, but he's too far gone. So they wind him down with methadone.

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 can't thank you enough for showing up. It's not the same without you.

I don't build no heathen temples, where the Lord has done laid a hand. There's a well on the hill, let it be.

I don't find the songs; they find me. I just strum my guitar and wait for a lyric to come.

I don't get into heavy political numbers because I don't find them lyrical.

I don't play the kind of music that works in a football stadium.

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 take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.

I don't think anyone really says anything new.

I find it a lot healthier for me to be someplace where I can go outside in my bare feet.

If I were to try to identify a turning point I'd say that was it - getting clean.

If the gig's going really well, I'm incredibly happy on stage and really feel good about my life and things.

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 think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.

I had a very moral upbringing, and spiritual in a sort of not very specific way.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Grammys because I don't see the music world as a competitive sport.

I have a studio in a barn at home - we rehearse there, we film there and we record there. It's fun to hang out with my guys and see what comes out next.

I know now one thing only matters in these days... true love... love and love alone.

I know there are people who don't like their audience or like the experience of being recognized or celebrated, but my audience has been very good - they don't bother me and when they do contact me it's usually on the nicest possible terms.

I'm always making music. I'm constantly making little musical recordings on my phone or on a little voice recorder I carry with me so I can remember these little pieces of music that eventually becomes songs.

I'm glad about what's happening to the music business. This last crop of people we had in the 90s, who are going away now, they didn't like music. They didn't trust musicians. They wanted something else from it.

I'm glad that I still have the ability to tour in Europe. I do love it.

I'm grateful to my audience, that there are people who will buy a ticket and come and see us play and who essentially support me and this life of music.

I'm looking forward to being able to retire from being a public figure and being able to afford to be myself!

I'm often surprised by classical music and musicians. I've met a large number of them because my wife works for the Boston Symphony, and I'm in that world a lot now. I'm surprised at how difficult it is for people who are classically trained to read music or to memorize music, how difficult it is for them to improvise, to just go off and play. It's sort of, it's like terra incognita. They just, (makes noise) they don't get it.

I'm trying to look at my blessings and how amazingly well against all odds things have turned out for me.

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.

In my mind I'm going to Carolina. Can't you see the sunshine, can't you just feel the moonshine? Ain't it just like a friend of mine, to hit me from behind, and I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind.

In the beginning, there was a kind of energy that - like an urgency to express myself, and the songs just couldn't be held in. But I think it changes, the nature of how that - what that energy is. And I need to court the muse in a much more serious way.

In the old days gigging was everything. The whole of life was about gigs. Everything was about waiting for the gig and then doing the gig and going nuts and then afterwards the party and all the stuff that goes with it. And then that party continues through your twenties and thirties. I'm now 51, and it's still very much in my blood, but I'm really hard pushed... the gig is the party for me now.

I played the cello from when I was ten, and then I bought a guitar from the father of some friends of mine and played that for a while. And then when I was fourteen or so, I bought a guitar - a real nice one - in Durham, North Carolina, that I worked with up until I was about twenty-five.

Ireland, Italy and Brazil are the most musical places for me. They're extremely musical cultures and anything you pitch they basically catch.

I sometimes wonder how many of these lifetime achievement awards you can accept before you have to do the decent thing and die.