Top 60 Joni Mitchell Quotes

I’m a night owl.

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

I’m not a pitiable creature. It’s just that I suffer very eloquently.

Drag wasn’t always counterculture.

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

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.

I’m a method actress in my songs, which is why it’s hard to sing them.

My parents told me I’d point to a bed of flowers and say ‘Pink. Pretty,’ before I knew any other words.

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.

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.

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.

Fame is a series of misunderstandings surrounding a name.

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

I’m a Buddhist.

I see music as fluid architecture.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Beginning of Survival is my best album. I am very proud of it, and I am surprised at it, too. I thought some of Travelogue was a little heavy, but I don’t think this is heavy.

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.

Because I’m so busy and because I think of myself as a painter, I desperately guard the time that I have to paint. And sometimes I’m irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep.

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.

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

In some ways, my gift for music and writing was born out of tragedy, really, and loss.

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

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

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.

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

I’m irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep.

I came through folk music simply because it was easy to get into it.

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.

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 certainly don’t want to be an angry old artist.

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

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.

I love to dance.

Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.

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.

For the first time in my career, I’m working in a fine-arts arena, so I’m finally getting some intelligent reviews.

The songwriting was almost like something I did while I was waiting for my daughter to come back.

I find a lot of poetry to be narcissistic.

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

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.

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

Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980.

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

I sing my sorrow, and I paint my joy.

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

I do have this reputation for being a serious person.

I’d had a rough childhood.

The coming of the kids hasn’t come out in my art yet.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I have one piece of music, since 1997, and I don’t see it having lyrics. Where does it go in this world? So I haven’t recorded it.