Songwriters From The United States

"I was coming to the end of my drinking time and was realizing I wasn’t the easiest person to be around at times. [...] I could be a fully functioning yet contrary alcoholic at 23 or 24. So songs like "I Apologize" are clearly me feeling like a bad young man, like I should apologise globally for something I probably did but was not fully aware of because I was drunk a lot."

"Bob Mould manages to crunch and jangle, often at the same time. In Hüsker Dü alone, he pioneered and defined a few American punk eras — hardcore, pop punk and early stirrings of alternative rock. These changes all occurred as his songwriting grew. His guitar work grew with it. He’s always appreciated and utilized the MXR Distortion + pedal’s sawtooth wave grit. Employing an Eventide Harmonizer electronically created a 12-string-like ring as ‘60s pop melodicism sank more into his work."

"We were just kind of writing the record, and we were going over the songs. Me and Glen, we were, like, 'We wanna redo the songs.' It's like we had completed them — about nine or twelve, whatever how many songs. They were all right, but we weren't really psyched about them. So we decided to rewrite them. And Jack didn't really like it. And he kind of left one day and just never came back. So that was that. He's not on [the new album]. I haven't talked to the guy in almost a year."

"The whole point of Satanic music is to blaspheme against the Church. [...] I don't believe in or worship a devil. Life is short enough without having to waste it doing this whole organized praying, hoping, wishing-type thing on some superior being."

"Hurrah for the flag of the free! May it wave as our standard forever, The gem of the land and the sea, The banner of the right. Let tyrants remember the day When our fathers with mighty endeavor Proclaimed as they marched to the fray That by their might and by their right It waves forever."

"Let martial note in triumph float And liberty extend its mighty hand A flag appears 'mid thunderous cheers, The banner of the Western land. The emblem of the brave and true Its folds protect no tyrant crew; The red and white and starry blue Is freedom's shield and hope."

"The works and prayers of centuries Have brought us to this day... What shall be our legacy? What will our children say?... Let me know in my heart, When my days are through, America, America, I gave my best to you."

"Home James, and don't spare the horses."

"You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, A sigh is just a sigh; The fundamental things apply, As time goes by."

"Cheer up! the worst is yet to come!"

"There’s a long, long trail a-winding Into the land of my dreams, Where the nightingales are singing And a white moon beams; There’s a long, long night of waiting Until my dreams all come true, Till the day when I’ll be going down That long, long trail with you."

""So I'm thankful for this unusual turbulent and emotional time that we're going through because I think a lot of people are going to come out very different"."

""My favorite time of day is the one I feel the most powerful in and that's random"."

""I think most people manifest everything that happens in their life"."

""I believe the universe wants to give, and if we ask very clearly what it is that we want, I believe that we receive exactly what we want"."

"Interview: Linda Perry by Katherine Yeske Taylor,25 April 2021 Retrieved 23/11/2023"

"“I found peace and balance.”"

"You have to let your history and your process and your longevity speak for you."

"I respect anybody who's pulled an idea out of their brain and fully brought it to life. That sh*t is spiritual. To know that it started as a thought and you brought it into fruition is crazy. Shout out the ones who see it all the way through. Keep creating."

"Gnarls Barkley is an alter ego and something like an out of body experience."

"I heard that you don't do favors for the mob but do you treat the devil the same?"

"In Jerusalem so much old anger floated around, echoed from fading graffiti, seeped out of cracks. Sometimes it bumped into new anger in the streets. The air felt stacked with weeping and raging and praying to God by all the different names. (p89)"

"Some people carried anger around for years, in a secret box inside their bodies, and it grew tighter like a hardening knot. The problem with it getting tighter and smaller was that the people did, too, hiding it...But other people responded differently. They let their anger grow so large it ate them up--even their voices and laughter. And still they couldn't get rid of it. They forgot where it had come from. They tried to shake the anger loose, but no one liked them by now. (p89)"

"If you could be anyone,would you choose to be yourself?"

"Right then he knew that moment was clearly written in his brain forever. (p170)"

"what a pleasure just to say words that felt bigger than you were. (p174)"

"Sometimes while traveling in Mexico or India or any elsewhere, I feel that luminous sense of being invisible as a traveler, having no long, historical ties, simply being a drifting eye…but after awhile, I grow tired of that feeling and want to be somewhere where the trees are my personal friends again."

"The texture of Nye's work reflects a life filled with nourishing family and wider human connections, and with travel as well...Always concerned with the detail of daily life and the emotional weight it carries, Nye is a poet who finds poetry everywhere around her, as well as a prose artist who brings to her work keen observation leavened with humor and compassion. Writing, as she says, is for her a necessary act."

"Aref kept staring at the sleeping turtles on the beach as they climbed. Turtles weren't just cold-blooded reptiles. They were miracles. (p201)"

"Maybe the hardest thing about moving overseas was being in a place where no one but your own family had any memory of you. It was like putting yourself back together with little pieces. (p80)"

"Teaching and writing are separate, but serve/feed one another in so many ways. Writing travels the road inward, teaching, the road out – helping OTHERS move inward"

""Look at something ahead of you in the distance, then look at it when you get right up next to it, then turn around and look at it again when it is behind you." (p. 108)"

""I would like to go to school with the donkeys in the field. To stand all day in the free air with an open mouth. No bells ringing." (p75)"

"For years the word floated in the air around their heads, yellow pollen, wispy secret dust of the ages passed on and on. Habibi, darling, or Habibti, feminine for my darling. (p204)"

"I think people who work on translation projects think that they're somehow peace negotiators because the belief is that we'll never stop killing one another until we understand and see one another as human beings. I think that's true. That's why it is very important to me to receive responses to poems like that from Israeli or Jewish poets; they're even more important than responses from Arab poets. When I get responses from an Israeli Jewish poet saying "I'm listening, I'm sorry, I don't like this either," that matters to me a lot."

"Savvy writer"

"Each thing gives us something else...The more any of us writes, the more our words will "come to us." If we trust in the words and their own mysterious relationships with one another, they will help us find things out."

"Give up the annoying question, "How long does this have to be?" Just wonder-how long does it need to be? Then try to find out."

"We feel uplifted, exhilarated. Writing regularly can help us feel that way too. It slows and eases us, calms us down. Having a focal point is generative. Consider the spaciousness of the sky over the water, which we often forget about as we scurry through our days. I love what the poet Marvin Bell has suggested about writing-Read something, then write something. Read something else, then write something else. It's all connected, it's always been connected. Let one activity inform the other. Streams of language exchanging their powers."

"Perhaps we have more voices in the air now-on TV, in our phones and computers and little saved videos-but are we able to hear them as well? Are these the voices we really need? Is our listening life-space deep enough? Can we tell ourselves when we need to walk away from chatter, turn it off entirely for half a day, or a full day, or a whole weekend, ease into a realm of something slower, but more tangible? Can we go outside and listen?"

"I do believe in overwriting, then cutting back. Physical fitness of the pen, page, and mind, interwoven. If you believe in revision you don't have to worry about perfection. Try not to worry about anything. It's impossible, of course, but try. I do think writing will help you live your life."

"If you're an "I read before I go to sleep" sort of person, why not add a little more I-just-got-home-from-school-or-work reading? In the modern world, we deserve to wind down. Or perhaps some morning reading, to launch yourself? How long does it take to read a poem? Slowing to a more gracious pacing-trying not to hurry or feel overwhelmed-inch by inch-one thought at a time-can be a deeply helpful mantra. It's a gift we give our own minds."

"(What is your advice to writers, especially young writers who are just starting out?) NSN: Number one: Read, Read, and then Read some more. Always Read. Find the voices that speak most to YOU. This is your pleasure and blessing, as well as responsibility! It is crucial to make one’s own writing circle – friends, either close or far, with whom you trade work and discuss it – as a kind of support system, place-of-conversation and energy. Find those people, even a few, with whom you can share and discuss your works – then do it. Keep the papers flowing among you. Work does not get into the world by itself. We must help it. Share the names of books that have nourished you. I love Writing Toward Home by Georgia Heard, for example. William Stafford’s three books of essays on the subject of writing – Crossing Unmarked Snow is the most recent – all from the Poets on Poetry series of the University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor – are invaluable. I love so many of these new anthologies that keep popping up. Let that circle be sustenance. There is so much goodness happening in the world of writing today. And there is plenty of ROOM and appetite for new writers. I think there always was. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. Attend all the readings you can, and get involved in giving some, if you like to do that. Be part of your own writing community. Often the first step in doing this is simply to let yourself become identified as One Who Cares About Writing! My motto early on was “Rest and be kind, you don’t have to prove anything” – Jack Kerouac’s advice about writing – I still think it’s true. But working always felt like resting to me."

"When you drove out in the country, you felt closer to the earth than you felt in the city. You had better thoughts in the country. Your thoughts made falcon moves, dipping and rippling, swooping back into your brain to land. Maybe the motion of spinning wheels relaxed and enlivened them. Your thoughts weren't tied to one spot, and they weren't nervous, either. They were just open, and rolling. Maybe this was why some people decided to travel all of their lives, going to new places, not knowing what they would see next. (p211)"

"Some people let their countries become their religions and that didn't work either. (p174)"

"I liked the portable, comfortable shape of poems. I liked the space around them and the way you could hold your words at arm’s length and look at them. And especially the way they took you to a deeper, quieter place, almost immediately."

"Discovering Something New Every Day was an Al-Amri family motto. Aref's father said people started playing this game the day they were born. (p7)"

"Voices as guides, lines and stanzas as rooms, sometimes a single word the furniture on which to sit...each day we could open the door, and enter, and be found. These days I wonder-was life always strange-just strange in different ways? Does speaking some of the strangeness help us survive it, even if we can't solve or change it?"

"Part of the role of the writer is to encourage other people to discover their voices."

"born on a bridge between two cultures, poet Naomi Shihab Nye is like a brilliant, talkative telephone operator in the Global Village: she plugs the reader in, makes connections, audacious comments, lyrical phrases."