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, its just complaining. – Joni Mitchell
I have one piece of music, since 1997, and I dont see it having lyrics. Where does it go in this world? So I havent recorded it. – Joni Mitchell
I dont 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
There was this mountain village in Russia where my music was getting in on some German radio station. I remember this because music used to get up to Saskatchewan from Texas. Late at night after the local station closed down. – Joni Mitchell
Jews have a special relationship to books, and the Haggadah has been translated more widely, and reprinted more often, than any other Jewish book. It is not a work of history or philosophy, not a prayer book, users manual, timeline, poem or palimpsest – and yet it is all these things. – Jonathan Safran Foer