Jeff Tweedy Song Quotations

I think I always thought of the guitar as the vehicle to be able to make some musical idea up. The only appeal to learning more chords was having more chords to put into songs. I never got too wrapped up in becoming technically good. So writing songs happened pretty simultaneously with learning how to play the guitar.

I really enjoy playing solo acoustic. I think it's good for me as a songwriter to stay in touch with what it takes to make a song work by yourself.

That's something that I think as a songwriter you have to ask yourself - why you're doing it. The world certainly doesn't need more songs. Are you doing it just for your ego?

I think the songs are more about relationships that are endless.

Even when I don't think I'm writing, I'm writing. There's some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it's collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that's when they come out.

I think there's a curiosity that can make you feel anxious as to what the world's going to make of what you're doing. It's not necessarily what you're going to get back in terms of record reviews or how people talk about your record, it's getting on the road and playing the new songs live.

I always think I don't have any songs, I don't have anything I'm working on, and I get in the studio and realize there are 20 things I'm thinking about. It's just kind of second nature.

I have always thought it was important to maintain some connection for myself to what it takes to make a song work by myself, to put a song across to an audience by myself.

I don't think there is anything hard at all about having a lot of songs. It makes it easier to be less precious about them, and know that everybody's going to want to work on some of them.

I spent a fair amount of time editing the lyrics and allowing the song to kind of evolve. ... anytime there's anything worthwhile, it certainly 'feels' like it happened on the spur of the moment, but it's a composite of lots of spurs of the moment, hopefully. And over time, you catch up with those, and then you have a full set of lyrics you've thought of and you feel comfortable singing.

I like making songs up. Whether or not they're great songs or good songs, whatever. It's something I've always done, and I definitely feel like I've gotten better at it.

My highest aspirations as a songwriter are that people would sing my songs or know songs I've written sometime in as far into the future as I feel comfortable seeing.

Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It's not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it's just like turning on the faucet. That's just the nature of it.

I always think its easier for me to write without thinking about the strict meter that's required for songs and song structures and things like that. It's much easier to just write on the page.