Joni Mitchell Quotes

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Joni Mitchell

Profession : Musician

Birth : November 7, 1943

To enjoy my music, you need depth and emotionality.

Joni Mitchell

I'm a Buddhist.

Joni Mitchell

I'd had a rough childhood.

Joni Mitchell

The God of the Old Testament is the depiction of evil.

Joni Mitchell

My name had gone stale, and no matter how progressive I got, it was my time to die.

Joni Mitchell

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

You have this mounting aggressive ignorance with the rabbit's foot of their particular religion. You don't really have any kind of spiritual law, just a kind of a rabid mental illness. The songs are a little slice of life.

Joni Mitchell

The coming of the kids hasn't come out in my art yet.

Joni Mitchell

The songwriting was almost like something I did while I was waiting for my daughter to come back.

Joni Mitchell

You wake up one day and suddenly realize that your youth is behind you, even though you're still young at heart.

Joni Mitchell

The Beginning of Survival is my best album. I am very proud of it, and I am surprised at it, too. I thought some of Travelogue was a little heavy, but I don't think this is heavy.

Joni Mitchell

Not to dismiss Gershwin, but Gershwin is the chip; Ellington was the block.

Joni Mitchell

The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music.

Joni Mitchell

Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980.

Joni Mitchell

I thrive on change. That's probably why my chord changes are weird, because chords depict emotions. They'll be going along on one key and I'll drop off a cliff, and suddenly they will go into a whole other key signature. That will drive some people crazy, but that's how my life is.

Joni Mitchell

My childhood was very difficult. I had every childhood disease and then some, but my parents didn't mollycoddle me. They left me to fight those battles on my own. I guess that was very Canadian, very stoic. But it's good. I had to become a warrior. I had to give up hope and find a substitute for hope that would be far more stable.

Joni Mitchell

But I have a tremendous will to live and a tremendous 'joie de vivre,' alternating with irritability.

Joni Mitchell

My goal as a writer is more to comfort than to disturb.

Joni Mitchell

In some ways, my gift for music and writing was born out of tragedy, really, and loss.

Joni Mitchell

Van Gogh was impulsive.

Joni Mitchell