I also used to work in the Catskill Mountains as a bus boy, and I performed in talent shows.

There's so much fear involved in trying to do something you don't know how to do that drugs and alcohol can become a big part of your life if you have an addictive personality or are very unsure, which most songwriters are.

You're going to have more rejection than acceptance.

I've written songs sober and I've written songs high.

If we didn't get the record, we didn't exist.

Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability.

One other thing, if it's possible, as songwriters, you should also develop yourself as record producers.

A guitar riff played on a piano doesn't come close to the purity of it being played on a guitar but I faked it enough to get by.

If I waited for inspiration every time I sat down to write a song I probably would be a plumber today.

I know at the beginning of our careers, my wife and I were gut wrenchingly competitive.

You've got to really be able to accept the rejection.

I quit college. I was studying architecture for about a year.

We lived, ate, and breathed pop songs.

You can get stale writing with each other for a while.

We became the songs we wrote.

If we were the team that won out, then life was good and we felt that we were worth something.

You have certain writing tools but generally creating something from nothing makes one quite mad and Cynthia and I are quite mad you know.

I also used to work in the Catskill Mountains as a bus boy, and I performed in talent shows.

I get a different kind of lyric from someone else that might make me go in a different musical direction.

I looked through our catalog year by year, and I saw that there were pockets of time when we wrote some terrific songs. Then all of a sudden, we'd go for another two or three months and there weren't great songs.

It's very hard to teach someone how to write a song if to begin with there's no creative crop to harvest.

We've written something like 900 songs in all.

I think that most writers who wait until they're inspired to write are just waiting for the fear to subside.

You have to be very brave in that first writing session.

It's amazing how a competitive nature can turn a negative into something positive.

It's very important, at least for me and for Cynthia, to get outside input.

The real danger of writing a great song when you're on something is that it might get you thinking that the only way to repeat that is by only writing when you're high.

Cynthia's lyrics always expressed the feelings people felt but they couldn't express themselves.

I think if one wants to be in a continual state of insanity one should stay married to that writing partner.

A guitar riff played on a piano doesnt come close to the purity of it being played on a guitar but I faked it enough to get by.

The day cold and fair with a high easterly wind: we were visited by two Indians who gave us an account of the country and people near the Rocky mountains where they had been.

Peter Lucas and I live in Durham but spend a great of time in North Wales, where we have a cottage in the mountains, and in Vermont, USA, with my sister - who is a children's writer married to a poet.

Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains.

I think that gravity sets into everything, including careers, but pendulums do swing and mountains do become valleys after a while... if you keep on walking.

You get used to sadness, growing up in the mountains, I guess.

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

I still love to walk in the mountains or be on the sea. I like to be in nature. Sometimes I bicycle. It's important to feel good with your body. The body is extremely important. If you feel good, you have more energy in your singing.

It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.

I can't do with mountains at close quarters - they are always in the way, and they are so stupid, never moving and never doing anything but obtrude themselves.

There is something of the freshness of mind, of the lightness of spirit in Linne which for centuries has been linked in people's minds with the mountains of Sweden and Swedish joy in nature.

I've walked a lot in the mountains in Iceland. And as you come to a new valley, as you come to a new landscape, you have a certain view. If you stand still, the landscape doesn't necessarily tell you how big it is. It doesn't really tell you what you're looking at. The moment you start to move the mountain starts to move.

It is said that many children who live in the central provinces, away from the ocean, have a great longing to see it. I who had never been away from the monotonous country surrounding us looked forward eagerly to seeing the mountains.

I spend my happiest hours in reading Vedantic books. They are to me like the light of the morning, like the pure air of the mountains - so simple, so true, if once understood.

It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe.

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

I'm not Candide, nor Dr Pangloss, but we know that faith moves mountains.

I think L.A.'s terrific. You fly an hour and a half and you're in the mountains in three feet of powder. I also think it's a much better city if you're working as an actor. If you're not working and you don't see your dreams coming true, there can be a lot of heartache.

Our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains.

Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.