Jackson Browne Quotations

I love to read. I love to stretch. In the morning, I get up, and if I'm not in a hurry, I will lie on the floor on a rug, look through some books and magazines, and maybe listen to music and try to do stretching exercises to tune up.

No matter how close to yours another's steps have grown, in the end there is one dance you'll do alone.

Right around the end of the fifties, college students and young people in general, began to realize that this music was almost like a history of our country - this music contained the real history of the people of this country.

I'd have to say that my favorite thing is writing a song that really says how I feel, what I believe - and it even explains the world to myself better than I knew it.

So I had a couple of years of playing trumpet. I really enjoyed it, but it was not the kind of instrument you could whip out at a party. Let's face it.

Like, What is the least often heard sentence in the English language? That would be: Say, isn't that the banjo player's Porsche parked outside?

I get some heat for what English people call 'overproduction.' I don't think my older stuff was overproduced, but I do think that sound has dated.

Very often it's really inconvenient - who you fall in love with. You can't really control it.

We have an open society. No one will come and take me away for saying what I am saying. But they don't have to, if they can control how many people hear it. And that's how they do it.

People know more about baseball players' contracts than they do about the policies that govern the fate of our children's lives in twenty years. Think about it. People used to say, the whole time I was growing up, 'Do you want to bring a child into this world?' That's pretty dire.

I grew up reading Shakespeare and Mark Twain.

I've also gotten to play in front of a million people in Central Park when there was a grass roots movement calling for nuclear disarmament - it was about 1982 - they called it Peace Sunday.

If someone said, 'You can go live in this little town in Costa Rica for a couple of weeks and all you've got to do is sing for us,' I would do that. That's more exciting to me than the prospect of going on some national tour, where you're going to play arenas or sheds every night, because of the crushing repetition of that kind of line.

The biggest influence? I've had several at different times - but the biggest for me was Bob Dylan, who was a guy that came along when I was twelve or thirteen and just changed all the rules about what it meant to write songs.

English people are so trapped in this class paradigm.

As far as those kinds of things, I also played at the concert to call for the release of Nelson Mandela when he was a political prisoner in South Africa. We were celebrating his 70th birthday and calling for his release.

I told my father I wanted to play the banjo, and so he saved the money and got ready to give me a banjo for my next birthday, and between that time and my birthday, I lost interest in the banjo and was playing guitar.

I wrote the song For A Dancer for a friend of mine who died in a fire. He was in the sauna in a house that burned down, so he had no idea anything was going on. It was very sad.

So what I do, more than play any instrument - I mean, I love to play - but more than that, I write songs. Songs that are about living, about what it's like to be going through all the things that people go through in life.

The idea that I wrote something that stood for the way I feel about things, and that it lasts, that's probably my favorite thing that I've done.

You can take as much as you can from the generation that has preceded you, but then it's up to you to make something new.

Also, right at that particular time in the music business, because of people like the Beatles, people began owning their own publishing. I'll just say this really quickly - they used to divide the money for the music that was written in two, just equal halves.

Music itself is a great source of relaxation. Parts of it anyway. Working in the studio, that's not relaxing, but playing an instrument that I don't know how to play is unbelievably relaxing, because I don't have any pressure on me.

I'm a big fan of British journalists like 'The Independent”s Robert Fisk, but it's hard to find voices like his in the U.S.

And my dad wanted me to play the trumpet because that's what he liked. His idol was Louis Armstrong. My dad thought my teeth came together in a way that was perfect for playing the trumpet.

It was a great time to be born, because I got to have my own publishing company right from the beginning, so I made more money than somebody would have doing what I did ten or fifteen years before.

Where the touch of the lover endsAnd the soul of the friend beginsThere's a need to be separate and a need to be oneAnd a struggle neither wins.

People were learning to play traditional music, folk songs, and that's a big field - that's everything from blues to Appalachian music.

I don't avoid anything. In my songs I just choose to talk about certain things, and so yeah, there are some aspects of my character and personality that don't come out.

Doctor my eyes, they can not see the sky.Is this the prize for having learned now not to cry?

Opportunity dances with those who are ready on the dance floor.

Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels. Looking back at the years gone by like so many summer fields.

It's not like I'm looking to describe something that's only true of my own circumstances. It's beyond. It's way inside, you know. It's reaching inside to something that you have in common with many.

I was doing my best Bogart, but I was having trouble getting into her jeans.

Rock me on the water Sister will you soothe my fevered brow Rock me on the water I'll get down to the sea somehow

Caught between the longing for love, and the struggle for the legal tender, where the sirens sing and the church bells ring, and the junk man pounds his fender. Where the veterans dream of the fight, fast asleep at the traffic light, and the children solemnly wait for the ice cream vendor.

How long will it be 'till we've turned To the tasks and the skills That we'll have to have learned If we're going to find our place in the future And have something to offer Where this planet's concerned?

People stand themselves next to the righteous They believe the things they say are true They speak in terms of what divides us To justify the violence they do But it is one, it is one One world spinning 'round the sun Wherever it is you call home Whatever country you come from It is one

They sell us the President the same way they sell us our clothes and cars.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

I taught myself to play the piano, because I wanted to play it.

People look around you, the signs are everywhere. You've left it for somebody other than you to be the one who to care.

Talk about celestial bodies.

I followed those highway signs and I've run down those thin white lines.

I started playing the trumpet when I was about eight.

I'm losing touch with reality and I'm almost out of blow. It's such a fine line, I hate to see it go. Cocaine, runnin' all 'round my brain.

Hunger in the midnight, hunger at the stroke of noon Hunger in the banquet, hunger in the bride and groom Hunger on the TV, hunger on the printed page And there's a God-sized hunger underneath the questions of the age

Where the search for the truth is conducted with a wink and a nod And where power and position are equated with the grace of God These times are famine for the soul while for the senses it's a feast From the edge of my country, as far as you see, looking east

You would think with all the genius and the brilliance of these times, we might find a higher purpose and a better use of mind.

Self-discovery in songwriting, bringing something forth that's instructive to yourself - some of the best songs that you will ever write are the ones where you didn't have to think about any of that stuff, but nonetheless that's what's happening in the song.

More than a career, I feel that I've got a function. I see things in a much more holistic way. Some people bake the bread, and some people write the songs.

I don't know what happens when people die Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try It's like a song I can hear playing right in my ear That I can't sing I can't help listening

Say it isn't true That there always has been and always will be war Say it isn't true And apart from all the fine things that man has struggled for Say it isn't true There always has been and always will be war

My forays into trying to date girls my own age from the school I went to were all pretty tortured.

I’m going to be a happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender.

That's maybe the most important thing each generation does, is to break a lot of rules and make up their own way of doing things.

Got seven women on my mind. Four that want to own me, two that want to stone me, and one says she's a friend of mine.

I never was a very good singer.

Oh Lord, are there really people starving still?

Now if I seem to be afraidTo live the life that I have made in songWell it's just that I've been losing so long.

In the end, they traded their tired wings for the resignation that living brings. And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow for the glitter and the rouge, and in the moment they were swept before the deluge.

Take it easy, take it easyDon't let the sound of your own wheelsDrive you crazy.

The first to come and the last to go, working for that minimum wage.

You've had to struggle, you've had to fight To keep understanding and compassion in sight You could be laughing at me, you've got the right But you go on smiling so clear and so bright

Well, I'm a standing on a cornerIn Winslow, ArizonaAnd such a fine sight to see,It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed FordSlowin' down to have a look at me.

I'm Glad that the Bush years are behind us

Make it on your own if you think you can.If you see somewhere to go, I understand.

How long can you hear someone crying - how long can you hear someone dying - before you ask yourself why?

I don't know where I'm running now, I'm just running on

I'm gonna be a happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender. Where the ads take aim and lay their claim to the heart and the soul of the spender. And believe in whatever may lie in those things that money can buy, though true love could have been a contender

Out into the cool of the evening strolls the pretender. He knows that all his hopes and dreams begin and end there.

Into a dancer you have grown from the seeds somebody else has sown

Now, guitar was pretty cool. Everybody knew something on the guitar. So I wanted to play guitar, but I told my dad if he wanted me to keep studying something, Id like to study piano.

So it's not really whether you talk about politics, but how well were you able to do it. Peter Gabriel and Sting get away with it...U2...the examples are there, of people being able to carry these subjects in the music, and the audience is absolutely able to embrace subjects that aren't just the stuff they already know about. And they're actually able to learn stuff.

Famine and disaster, right there in front of you, and the more you watch, the less you do.

Say a prayer for the pretender, who started out so young and strong only to surrender.

I let her do some of my laundry and she slipped in a few meals in between, and next thing I remember, she was all moved in.

Eleven on a scale of ten, honey, let me introduce you to my redneck friend.

People know more about baseball players contracts than they do about the policies that govern the fate of our childrens lives in twenty years. Think about it. People used to say, the whole time I was growing up, Do you want to bring a child into this world? Thats pretty dire.

That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.

I want to know what became of the changes we waited for love to bring/Were they only the fitful dreams of some greater awakening?

The kid I was when I first left home Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own But the freedom that he found wasn't quite as sweet When the truth was known I have prayed for America I was made for America I can't let go till she comes around Until the land of the free Is awake and can see And until her conscience has been found.

The high ideals and promises you once dressed the future in are dancing in the embers with the wind.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, it could be that I've lost my way.

And while the future's there for anyone to change, still you know it's seems, It would be easier sometimes to change the past.

Coffee in the morning, cocaine afternoons.

You measure peace with guns, progress in megatons. Who's left when the war is won?

Musician jokes are a kind of joke that usually have to do with how much money someone makes. Musicians are always starving, so they're really mean to each other about who makes what.

But when you know that you've got a real friend somewhere, suddenly all the others are so much easier to bear.

I look around for the friends I used to turn to pull me through. Looking into their eyes, I see them running, too.

When I really started liking music was when I could play some of it myself, and after a couple of years of playing folk music, I kinda rediscovered those hits that were on the radio all the time when I was a kid.

I'm sensitive, you know, about some things, and as some of my partners could attest to, incredibly insensitive.

When you turn out the light, I've got to hand it to me. Looks like it's you and me again tonight Rosie.

Somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go may lie a reason you were alive, but you'll never know.

These days I seem to think about the things I forgot to do for you and all the times I had a chance to.

Let the disappointments pass, let the laughter fill your glass.

I want to find myself a girl who can show me what laughter means, and we'll fill in the missing numbers in each others paint-by-numbers dreams.

No matter how fast I run, I can't get away from me.

Let the music keep our spirits high, let the buildings keep our children dry, let creation reveal its secrets by and bye.

I've been aware of the time passing by they say in the end it's the wink of an eye and when the morning light comes streaming in you'll get up and do it again