James Taylor

I played the cello from when I was ten, and then I bought a guitar from the father of some friends of mine and played that for a while. And then when I was fourteen or so, I bought a guitar - a real nice one - in Durham, North Carolina, that I worked with up until I was about twenty-five.

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me.

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

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me. It's not as if I sit down and play 'Fire and Rain' by myself, just to hear it again. But to offer it up... the energy that it somehow summons live takes me right back, and I do get a reconnection to the emotions.

I'm glad that I still have the ability to tour in Europe. I do love it.

I know there are people who don't like their audience or like the experience of being recognized or celebrated, but my audience has been very good - they don't bother me and when they do contact me it's usually on the nicest possible terms.

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.

Ireland, Italy and Brazil are the most musical places for me. They're extremely musical cultures and anything you pitch they basically catch.

Though 'Fire and Rain' is very personal, for other people it resonates as a sort of commonly held experience... And that's what happens with me. I write things for personal reasons, and then in some cases it... can be a shared experience.

Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.

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.

People have used my songs and guitar style to teach guitar for a long time.

When you write a song, it may come from a personal space, but it very seldom actually represents you. It comes out of a sort of mood of melancholy, somehow. It's almost theatrical.

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.

I don't get into heavy political numbers because I don't find them lyrical.

Music is my living. I enjoy selling my music.

Photographers and reporters are mostly after me. They want to know what I read and what I'm like and I don't really know myself, so how can I tell them?

I find it a lot healthier for me to be someplace where I can go outside in my bare feet.

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

If you feel like singing along, don't.

You have to choose whether to love yourself or not.

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

The Beatles were a phenomenon, but they were also ordinary blokes like anyone else. I was lucky enough to see that side.

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.

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

I have a love-hate relationship with the Grammys because I don't see the music world as a competitive sport.

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

I have a studio in a barn at home - we rehearse there, we film there and we record there. It's fun to hang out with my guys and see what comes out next.

I don't reinvent myself in any major way. It seems to be a slow evolution. I go back and visit certain themes that I feel strongly about and resonate with me emotionally.

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

The best thing is when you hear somebody take your song and make something great of it.

When I cleaned up some 17 odd years ago, I felt terrible for about six months. The only thing that gave me any real relief was strenuous physical activity.

I had a very moral upbringing, and spiritual in a sort of not very specific way.

I don't read music. I don't write or read music.

I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about black music, about soul music.

I was a huge Beatles fan. We could talk about who I listened to growing up and what my sources were, but certainly the Beatles were a late, important resource for me, and I just took my guitar and a handful of songs, and I decided, well, I'll just go over and travel around Europe and see what comes of it.

To me, very much of what is artistic is people's very creative and inventive ways out of impossible situations.

Television news is now entertainment, and the stories are being written by the people that have a special interest in them.

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

I don't play the kind of music that works in a football stadium.

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.

People should watch out for three things: avoid a major addiction, don't get so deeply into debt that it controls your life, and don't start a family before you're ready to settle down.

I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.

I don't know much about God. But if everything does originate with God, then certainly songs do as well.

I can take criticisms but not compliments.

I am myself for a living. I don't animate a character.

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

Certain things in life are more important than the usual crap that everyone strives for.

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.

Things started to get out of control when I began reading that I was a superstar.