Here are some quotes about songwriting and creating songs from famous songwriters. Use these quotes to inspire and motivate you to create your own songs.

John Lennon: "Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed." (source)

Taylor Swift: "If you're horrible to me, I'm going to write a song about it, and you won't like it. That's how I operate."

Sia Furler: "I'll choose lyrical content from a list of concepts I have in my phone, and whenever I think of one, I write it down. I usually choose a word, one solid concept. So say I’m looking around and I see a chandelier, I think ‘oh, how can I use that?' ... There's a lot of strategy that goes into it." (source)

Prince: "Sometimes ideas are coming so fast that I have to stop doing one song to get another. But I don't forget the first one. If it works, it will always be there. It's like the truth: it will find you and lift you up. And if it ain't right, it will dissolve like sand on the beach." (source)

Tracy Chapman: "Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control."

Taylor Swift: "The more it seems like a journal entry the better. The more it seems like an open letter the better." (source)

Bjork: "Sometimes when I write lyrics there are images in them, usually on a quite simplistic level, like colors. But most often music comes first and then later I sit down with visual people and we chat about what we want to do. I don't look at myself as a visual artist. I make music." (source)

Ed Sheeran: "I could go three months without writing a single song and in one week I’ll write twenty. But I never want to write a song just to have a hit. I write a song because I want it to make me feel better. Other people have different ways of letting off steam. Mine is writing songs." (source)

Dolly Parton: "I write every day, even when I'm on a plane, in the tub or on the bus. It burns in me. Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn't get some of that stuff out. Not everything I write is good, but it's all good for me -- like therapy." source)

Eminem: "People say that the word 'orange' doesn’t rhyme with anything, and that kind of pisses me off, because I can think of a lot of things that rhyme with orange. If you're taking the word at face value and you just say 'orange,' nothing is gonna rhyme with it exactly. If you enunciate it and make it more than one syllable - or-ange - you could say, like, 'I put my or-ange four-inch door hinge in stor-age and ate por-ridge with Ge-orge.'" (source)

Kacey Musgraves: "Lately, it’s funny because I almost need to be depressed sometimes to get good material. So I'm like, 'Goddamn it, I'm in love right now.' It's hard to write when you’re really happy, so I’ll ask a co-writer, 'Please tell me about the terrible parts of your relationship.'" (source)

Bob Dylan: "The evolution of a song is like a snake with its tail in its mouth. That's evolution. That's what it is. As soon as you're there, you find your tail." (source: Dylan on Dylan: Interviews and Encounters)

Adele: "I don't write songs about a specific, elusive thing. I write about love, and everyone knows what it is like to have your heart broken. Heartbreak can definitely give you a deeper sensibility for writing songs. I drew on a lot of heartbreak when I was writing my first album, I didn’t mean to but I just did."

Madonna: "Songwriting is a really intimate experience, it’s kind of like sitting down with a stranger and telling them every secret of your soul…you have to be not afraid to make a fool of yourself." (source)

Sara Bareilles: "I feel like my songs are like diary entries for me. So I usually write about things that have happened to me specifically or sometimes it can be someone who's close to me." source)

Bono: "If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It's a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting." source)

Kurt Cobain: "Most of the music is really personal as far as the emotion and the experiences that I've had in my life, but most of the themes in the songs aren't that personal. They're more just stories from TV or books or movies or friends. But definitely the emotion and feeling is from me." (source)