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Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

James Taylor Quotes

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

– James Taylor

If you feel like singing along, don’t.

– James Taylor

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

– James Taylor

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.

– James Taylor

Music is my living. I enjoy selling my music.

– James Taylor

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

– James Taylor

Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to have made a lot of difference to my audience that I’m as bald as a billiard ball!

– James Taylor

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

– James Taylor

One of my earliest memories was me singing ‘Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin’ at the top of my voice when I was seven. I got totally carried away. My grandmother, Sarah, was in the next room. I didn’t even realise she was there. I was terribly embarrassed.

– James Taylor

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.

– James Taylor

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.

– James Taylor

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

– James Taylor

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

– James Taylor

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

– James Taylor

I was a functional addict.

– James Taylor

It’s a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you’re being autobiographical. But it’s what everyone wants – to get everyone’s attention, to have your music make a living for you, to be validated in that way.

– James Taylor

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

– James Taylor

I think it surprises a lot of people that I’m still around, you know, still – that I’m not pushing up daisies, as they say.

– James Taylor

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.

– James Taylor

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.

– James Taylor

I collect hats. That’s what you do when you’re bald.

– James Taylor

What I’ve always done as an entertainer is try to come up with things that people will find interesting, or compelling, or humorous.

– James Taylor

I was in chemical jail.

– James Taylor

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

– James Taylor

I tend to write out the first iteration of a lyric here and then go over here and make variations on it, on the page opposite.

– James Taylor

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

– James Taylor

It’s a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you’re being autobiographical.

– James Taylor

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

– James Taylor

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

– James Taylor

A concert is always like a feast day to me.

– James Taylor

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