James Taylor

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

We all have to face pain, and pain makes us grow.

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

A concert is always like a feast day to me.

I enjoy selling my music. I don't enjoy selling myself.

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

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

Being on a boat that's moving through the water, it's so clear. Everything falls into place in terms of what's important and what's not.

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.

I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others.

The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.

I don't think anyone really says anything new.

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.

Somehow it helps just to take something that's internal and externalize it, to see it in front of you.

Once you get that two-way energy thing going, everyone benefits hugely.

Music is like a huge release of tension.

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.

It's hard to find a way forward. When you're 18 it happens in huge chunks every day, but after 20 years, growth is much more costly.

It is the most delightful thing that ever happens to me, when I hear something coming out of my guitar and out of my mouth that wasn't there before.

If you're an addict, it controls your life and your life becomes uncontrollable. It's boring and painful, filling your system with something that makes you stare at your shoes for six hours.

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

If the gig's going really well, I'm incredibly happy on stage and really feel good about my life and things.

I'm very unstable; there's no stability in a musician's life at all. You live on a bus or on the road hand to mouth and you don't know where your money's coming from.

I was in chemical jail.

I was a functional addict.

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

I think people are isolated because of the nature of human consciousness, and they like it when they feel the connection between themselves and someone else.

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

I don't take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.

Sobering up was responsible for breaking up my marriage. That's what it couldn't stand.

That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind.