James Taylor

I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.

I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others.

I don’t think anyone really says anything new.

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 was a functional addict.

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

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.

I believe 100 percent in the power and importance of music.

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.

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.

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.

I don’t take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.

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

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.

I don’t read music. I don’t write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.

Knowing when to quit is probably a very important thing, but I just am not ready.

I don’t know much about God. But if everything does originate with God, then certainly songs do as well.

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

I was in chemical jail.

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.

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.

Somehow it helps just to take something that’s internal and externalize it, to see it in front of you.

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.

Once you get that two-way energy thing going, everyone benefits hugely.

Sobering up was responsible for breaking up my marriage. That’s what it couldn’t stand.

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.

You have to choose whether to love yourself or not.

If you feel like singing along, don’t.

I can take criticisms but not compliments.

Time will take your money, but money won’t buy time.

That’s the motivation of an artist – to seek attention of some kind.

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.

The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.

We all have to face pain, and pain makes us grow.

Music is like a huge release of tension.

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

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.

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.

I think that we’re all totally isolated beings and always will be.

I am myself for a living. I don’t animate a character.