Joni Mitchell

“I heard someone from the music business saying they are no longer looking for talent, they want people with a certain look and a willingness to cooperate.”

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

“I come from pioneer stock, developers of the West, people who went out into the wilderness and set up home with nothing but a pair of oxen.”

“When you're trying to pass on the best of the stuff you're culling to what should be a hungry culture but you have it diminished... that's kind of disappointing.”

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

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

“I see the entire world as Eden, and every time you take an inch of it away, you must do so with respect.”

“I'm not a pitiable creature. It's just that I suffer very eloquently.”

“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 i...”

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

“When I began experimenting, people weren't ready for it. Once it's in its second and third generational stages, people can accept it.”

“I think I would go further into fine arts, I think, if I were to continue.”

“I don't like to make fluffy little songs, but now I want to make some light songs.”

“I see music as fluid architecture.”

“I came through folk music simply because it was easy to get into it.”

“I know my generation - a lot of them, they're getting old now, and they want to think back fondly, they want to kid themselves. A lot of them think, 'Yeah, we were the best.' That's the kiss...”

“Ira Gershwin, shame on him. I mean, some of the writing.”

“Van Gogh was impulsive.”

“I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejecte...”

“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....”