Tiddely Poms
It's a good idea to develop a well organized file of quotations. Or so they tell me. My system is more a pile of scraps. Here are a few to needlepoint onto your antimacassars:
Father said, whether it's a fiddle tune or a gospel song, learn it right off the record from the people who grew up with it. Don't just learn it from a piece of paper. -- Pete Seeger
If you know who wrote it, it isn't a folk song. -- Michael Cooney
The main job of a folksinger, I've always felt, is to explore the past. -- Art Thieme
It's okay to look back, as long as you don't stare -- Tom Paxton
The Beatniks hated folk music. -- Dave Van Ronk.
I was a snob of a kid, 'cause there was a time if it wasn't classical I wasn't interested. -- Odetta
I hate songwriting just as much now as I did when I was sixteen. -- Randy Newman
I really hate songwriting. I know that it's something I have to do and it comes to me, but I don't enjoy it. -- k.d. lang
Writing, overall, has never been what I'd call fun. It's fulfilling. It doesn't come real easy for me. -- Iris DeMent
If the Pope knew how much fun [songwriting] was there'd be a brand new mortal sin. -- Michael Smith
Writing anything is terribly hard but, alas for me, because I am addicted, a heck of a lot of fun. -- Judy Collins
I don't find the songs; they find me. I just strum my guitar and wait for a lyric to come. -- James Taylor
Being a good songwriter means paying attention and sticking your hand out the window to catch the song on the way to someone else's house. -- Nanci Griffith
It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page. -- Joan Baez
One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head. -- Billie Holiday
A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. -- Thomas Mann
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. -- Robert Heinlein
I have found that I work best with a cheap spiral bound notebook... Spiral bound notebooks are cheap, durable, portable and will not erase themselves during a thunderstorm. -- Joel Mabus
I think one of the reasons I'm popular again is because I'm wearing a tie. You have to be different. -- Tony Bennett
When I play, the women come around to listen and their men get angry. -- Leadbelly
Part of my daily life is catching men in the act of being schmucks and because I've written about that... a red flag has gone up in the music business. -- Ani DiFranco.
I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. -- Woody Guthrie
There is an element of truth in every idea that lasts long enough to be called corny. -- Irving Berlin
I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching. -- David Byrne
We didn't have any instruments, so I had to use my guitar. -- Maybelle Carter
If you play more than two chords, you're showing off. -- Woody Guthrie
I hate show business. -- Joni Mitchell
I'm a farmer with a mandolin and a high tenor voice. -- Bill Monroe
Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don't. -- Pete Seeger
I feel about me like I'm one of the working people, just like you, and everybody else. I don't fit the part of a celebrity. -- Doc Watson
I'd think learning to play the guitar would be very confusing for sighted people. -- Doc Watson
Sometimes life gives us lessons sent in ridiculous packaging. -- Dar Williams
I found a way to practice autoharp while I was drivin' my rig for the newspaper route. I found some knobs to put on my steering wheel so that I could steer with my knees. -- Bryan Bowers
I'm determined not to do folk theater or put on a pork pie hat and try and be a bluesman or to put on some old baggy suit and be an old timey guy. -- Harvey Reid
Most blues don't have a beginning, middle, or end. You just cut a couple slices of blues. -- Dave Van Ronk
If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. -- Albert Einstein
It would be nice to hear someone accidentally whistle something of mine, somewhere, just once. -- Leonard Bernstein
A song ain't nothing but a conversation fixed up to where you can talk it over and over without getting tired of it. -- Woody Guthrie
A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. -- Chinese proverb
Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire. -- Steven Wright
I only know two pieces; one is 'Clair de Lune' and the other one isn't. -- Victor Borge
The final story, the final chapter of western man, I believe, lies in Los Angeles.
-- Phil OchsIf you want to make a song more hummy, add a few tiddely poms. -- Pooh