Joni Mitchell Quotes & Sayings

I get the urge for going/But I never seem to go, — Joni Mitchell

You can give me 400,000 hostile people and I won't even break sweat. If you give me 200 adoring people, my mouth will dry out. — Joni Mitchell

I'm a little young for retirement. — Joni Mitchell

I believe that I am male and I am female. — Joni Mitchell

I'm drinking champagne, got the head phones up high, can't numb you out. — Joni Mitchell

I still believe in the power of the word, that words inspire. — Joni Mitchell

Heart and humor and humility, he said will lighten up your heavy load. — Joni Mitchell

Oh it gets so lonely
When you're walking
And the streets are full of strangers — Joni Mitchell

Bob [Dylan] is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I. — Joni Mitchell

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. — Joni Mitchell

She'll prophesy your death. She won't say when. — Joni Mitchell

Just before our love got lost you said
"I am as constant as a northern star"
And I said, constantly in the darkness,
Where's that at?
If you want me I'll be in the bar. — Joni Mitchell

Oh you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
And I would still be on my feet
Oh I would still be on my feet — Joni Mitchell

A little lawyer on the tube, he said, its so easy now, anyone can sue. — Joni Mitchell

Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl. Most of my best
work came out of it. — Joni Mitchell

you dont know what you got till its gone — Joni Mitchell

When you reach that kind of successful pinnacle, it is the nature of the business and the press and everything that they go about tearing you down. — Joni Mitchell

Whatever it was that I felt was the weak link in my previous project gave me inspiration for the next one. — Joni Mitchell

I paint my joy and I sing my sorrow. — Joni Mitchell

The land of litigation, the courts are like game shows. Take what's behind the curtain the jury cries. — Joni Mitchell

You wake up one day and suddenly realize that your youth is behind you, even though you're still young at heart. — Joni Mitchell

My parents told me I'd point to a bed of flowers and say 'Pink. Pretty,' before I knew any other words. — Joni Mitchell

All my battles were with male egos. I'm just looking for equality, not to dominate. But I want to be able to control my vision. — Joni Mitchell

I have a tremendous joie de vivre ... alternating with irritability of course. — Joni Mitchell

We call for the three great stimulants of the exhausted ones, artifice, brutality, and innocence. — Joni Mitchell

I like my freedom. I like to do my own grocery shopping. — Joni Mitchell

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

People used to say nobody can sing my songs but me - they're too personal. — Joni Mitchell

Some people are upset to see you doing ordinary things. Those people, if they were a celebrity, they would have an entourage. — Joni Mitchell

The Hollywood sirens are shrieking, while down some search lit alley runs some lost belief. — Joni Mitchell

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. — Joni Mitchell

You win the lasting laurels with your laughter. — Joni Mitchell

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. — Joni Mitchell

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

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

Rachmaninoff made a musician out of me. His 'Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini' was the piece that sent me into raptures. It spoke to me. To me, it was a tender entreaty for the misunderstood. — Joni Mitchell

I like to move around. I travel. I've driven across country by myself. — Joni Mitchell

I'm not a pitiable creature. It's just that I suffer very eloquently. — Joni Mitchell

When I began experimenting, people weren't ready for it. Once it's in its second and third generational stages, people can accept it. — Joni Mitchell

I don't like being too looked up at or too looked down on. I prefer meeting in the middle to being worshiped or spat out. — Joni Mitchell

Sunlight will renew your pride. — Joni Mitchell

People will tell you were they have gone, they'll tell you where to go, but until you get there for yourself you never really know. — Joni Mitchell

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. — Joni Mitchell

My goal as a writer is more to comfort than to disturb. — Joni Mitchell

I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them. — Joni Mitchell

I hang my laundry on the line when I write. — Joni Mitchell

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. — Joni Mitchell

I do have this reputation for being a serious person. — Joni Mitchell

A woman I knew just drowned herself
The well was deep and muddy
She was just shaking off futility
Or punishing somebody
My friends were calling up all day yesterday
All emotions and abstractions
It seems we all live so close to that line
and so far from satisfaction — Joni Mitchell

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. — Joni Mitchell

I wish I had a river I could skate away on? — Joni Mitchell

To enjoy my music, you need depth and emotionality. — Joni Mitchell

The bands and the roadies, love 'em and leave 'em. It's pleasure to try 'em, but trouble to keep 'em. — Joni Mitchell

Unlike some of my peers, I haven't really hit a writer's block. When I hit a block I just paint, which is an old crop rotation trick. — Joni Mitchell

Van Gogh was impulsive. — Joni Mitchell

This is a nation that has lost the ability to be self-critical, and that makes a lie out of the freedoms. — Joni Mitchell

The rock & roll industry is very incestuous, and we have all been close at one time or another. A lot of beautiful music and a lot of beautiful times came from that. A lot of pain, too, because, inevitably, different relationships broke up. — Joni Mitchell

Musically, I don't think I'd ever dry up. I trust my musical invention. — Joni Mitchell

I didn't like the sound of people gasping at the mere mention of my name. It horrified me. — Joni Mitchell

I don't like to make fluffy little songs, but now I want to make some light songs. — Joni Mitchell

I create by feeling rather than by intellectualizing. — Joni Mitchell

Ask anyone in America where the craziest people live and they'll tell you California. Ask anyone in California where the craziest people live and they'll say Los Angeles. Ask anyone in Los Angeles where the craziest people live and they'll tell you Hollywood. Ask anyone in Hollywood where the craziest people live and they'll say Laurel Canyon. And ask anyone in Laurel Canyon where the craziest people live and they'll say Lookout Mountain. So I bought a house on Lookout Mountain. — Joni Mitchell

I'm an individual, and an individual can't follow and doesn't want to lead. — Joni Mitchell

I am a woman of heart and mind, looking for affection and respect, a little passion. — Joni Mitchell

Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air and feather canyons everywhere, I've looked at clouds that way. — Joni Mitchell

I sang in art school, just to get money to smoke. — Joni Mitchell

At the point where I'm trying to force something and it's not happening, and I'm getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go and pick up the guitar. — Joni Mitchell

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

You've got to keep the child alive; you can't create without it. — Joni Mitchell

When I felt that fame, people were nosing me out, well I moved on. I used traveling names. Wigs, if necessary. — Joni Mitchell

I was only a folk singer for about two years ... . By that time, it wasn't really folk music anymore. It was some new American phenomenon. Later, they called it singer/songwriters. Or art songs, which I liked best. Some people get nervous about that word. Art. They think it's a pretentious word from the giddyap. To me, ... the word art has never lost its vitality. — Joni Mitchell

He's swept with the broom of contempt and the rooms have an empty ring. — Joni Mitchell

Buddy Holly and the early rock 'n' roll was no lighter than the way I play. It's very minimal. — Joni Mitchell

The only thing I have to give to make you smile, to win you with, are all the mornings still to live. — Joni Mitchell

You know that it never has been easy
Whether you do or do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of the extremities
Or stick to some straighter line. — Joni Mitchell

Because Elvis gave 'em cars, you think I'm cheap. — Joni Mitchell

I am as constant as a northern star — Joni Mitchell

I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' He gets a bad rap; he's very misunderstood. He's a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers. — Joni Mitchell

I see bodies as individual things. — Joni Mitchell

What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song. — Joni Mitchell

Once I got the open tunings for some reason, I began to get the harmonic sophistication that I heard that my musical fountain inside was excited by. Once I got some interesting chords to play with, my writing began to come. — Joni Mitchell

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. — Joni Mitchell

Some turn to Jesus and some turn to heroin. — Joni Mitchell

The pirate he will sink you with a kiss, he'll steal your heart and sail away. — Joni Mitchell

I came upon a child of god, He was walking along the road And I asked him, where are you going And this he told me: I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band I'm going to camp out on the land, I'm going to try an' get my soul free. — Joni Mitchell

Will you take me as I am? Strung out on another man ... California, I'm comin' home. — Joni Mitchell

Land of snap decisions, land of short attention spans, nothing is savored long enough to really understand. — Joni Mitchell

I was demanding of myself a deeper and greater honesty, more and more revelation in my work in order to give it back to the people where it goes into their lives and nourishes them and changes their direction and makes light bulbs go off in their head and makes them feel. And it isn't vague, it strikes against the very nerves of their life and in order to do that you have to strike against the very nerves of your own. — Joni Mitchell

Acid, booze, and ass, needles, guns, and grass, lots of laughs. — Joni Mitchell

An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child. — Joni Mitchell

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I knew there was milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges, too. — Joni Mitchell

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

I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions? — Joni Mitchell

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. — Joni Mitchell

Happiness is the best facelift. — Joni Mitchell

How does a person create a song? A lot of it is being open to encounter and to be in touch with the miraculous. — Joni Mitchell

An artist needs a certain amount of turmoil and confusion. — Joni Mitchell

I've got 50 different tunings in the guitar. — Joni Mitchell

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels The dizzy dancing way you feel As every fairy tale comes real I've looked at love that way. — Joni Mitchell

I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead. — Joni Mitchell