Joni Mitchell Quotes

You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining.
Joni Mitchell

Good, Emotional, Through

Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.
Joni Mitchell

Sympathy, Hard, Tell

There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said.
Joni Mitchell

Said, Confess, Enrich

Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980.
Joni Mitchell

Stupid, Since, Decided

Back then, I didn't have a big organization around me. I was just a kid with a guitar, traveling around. My responsibility basically was to the art, and I had extra time on my hands. There is no extra time now. There isn't enough time.
Joni Mitchell

Time, Art, Enough

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

Happiness, Understand, Why

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

Public, Individual, Eye

America is in a runaway-train position and dragging all the world with it. It's grotesquely mentally ill.
Joni Mitchell

America, Position, Ill

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

Writing, Trying, Guitar

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

Rock, Play, Early

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

Person, Serious, Reputation

I used to be monastic, almost. Now I'm like a Tibetan that has discovered hamburgers and television. I'm catching up on Americana.
Joni Mitchell

Used, Almost, Television

I'm a very analytical person, a somewhat introspective person; that's the nature of the work I do.
Joni Mitchell

Work, Nature, Person

No one likes to have less than they had before. That's the nature of the human animal.
Joni Mitchell

Nature, Human, Before

The thing that gave me the most pain in life, psychologically, and it gave me tremendous pain psychologically, is man's disrespect for nature.
Joni Mitchell

Life, Nature, Pain

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

War, Democracy, Him

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

Once, Accept, Second

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

Happy, Mother, Child

Augustine, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are confessional writers and all three make me sick. I have nothing in common with them.
Joni Mitchell

Nothing, Sick, Three

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

Time, Sleep, Forget

Drag wasn't always counterculture.
Joni Mitchell

Edith Piaf knocked my socks off when I was 8, but I didn't know what she was singing about.
Joni Mitchell

Off, She, Singing

Eventually, with success, I started to feel more and more isolated - like I didn't have a community of artists.
Joni Mitchell

Success, Started, Community

Everyone I know has attention deficit, and they say it with great pride. It's a bad time to be right.
Joni Mitchell

Time, Great, Bad

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

Time, Career, Working

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Biography

Nationality: Canadian

Born: November 7, 1943

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