Jackson Browne Quotes

I was doing my best Bogart, but I was having trouble getting into her jeans.

Out into the cool of the evening strolls the pretender. He knows that all his hopes and dreams begin and end there.

Talk about celestial bodies.

Please don't confront me with my failures
I have not forgotten them

And while the future's there for anyone to change, still you know it's seems, It would be easier sometimes to change the past.

Do the steps that you've been shown,
by everyone you've ever known,
until the dance becomes your very own.

Doctor, my eyes cannot see the sky. Is this the prize for having learned how not to cry?

Hunger in the midnight, hunger at the stroke of noon
Hunger in the banquet, hunger in the bride and groom
Hunger on the TV, hunger on the printed page
And there's a God-sized hunger underneath the questions of the age

No matter how close to yours another's steps have grown, in the end there is one dance you'll do alone.

I don't avoid anything. In my songs I just choose to talk about certain things, and so yeah, there are some aspects of my character and personality that don't come out.

I let her do some of my laundry and she slipped in a few meals in between, and next thing I remember, she was all moved in.

Say a prayer for the pretender, who started out so young and strong only to surrender.

Don't confront me with my failures, I had not forgotten them.

I get some heat for what English people call 'overproduction.' I don't think my older stuff was overproduced, but I do think that sound has dated.

More than a career, I feel that I've got a function. I see things in a much more holistic way. Some people bake the bread, and some people write the songs.

Music itself is a great source of relaxation. Parts of it anyway. Working in the studio, that's not relaxing, but playing an instrument that I don't know how to play is unbelievably relaxing, because I don't have any pressure on me.

We have an open society. No one will come and take me away for saying what I am saying. But they don't have to, if they can control how many people hear it. And that's how they do it.

When you've found another soul who see's in to your own ... take good care of each other..and remember to be kind..

The high ideals and promises you once dressed the future in are dancing in the embers with the wind.

Let the music keep our spirits high, let the buildings keep our children dry, let creation reveal its secrets by and bye.

I started playing the trumpet when I was about eight.

You measure peace with guns, progress in megatons. Who's left when the war is won?

And my dad wanted me to play the trumpet because that's what he liked. His idol was Louis Armstrong. My dad thought my teeth came together in a way that was perfect for playing the trumpet.

Say it isn't true
That there always has been and always will be war
Say it isn't true
And apart from all the fine things that man has struggled for
Say it isn't true
There always has been and always will be war

That's maybe the most important thing each generation does, is to break a lot of rules and make up their own way of doing things.

My forays into trying to date girls my own age from the school I went to were all pretty tortured.

You would think with all the genius and the brilliance of these times, we might find a higher purpose and a better use of mind.

I'm losing touch with reality and I'm almost out of blow. It's such a fine line, I hate to see it go. Cocaine, runnin' all 'round my brain.

I'd have to say that my favorite thing is writing a song that really says how I feel, what I believe - and it even explains the world to myself better than I knew it.

It was a great time to be born, because I got to have my own publishing company right from the beginning, so I made more money than somebody would have doing what I did ten or fifteen years before.

People stand themselves next to the righteous They believe the things they say are true They speak in terms of what divides us To justify the violence they do But it is one, it is one One world spinning 'round the sun Wherever it is you call home Whatever country you come from It is one

Also, right at that particular time in the music business, because of people like the Beatles, people began owning their own publishing. I'll just say this really quickly - they used to divide the money for the music that was written in two, just equal halves.

Very often it's really inconvenient - who you fall in love with. You can't really control it.

The kid I was when I first left home Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own But the freedom that he found wasn't quite as sweet When the truth was known I have prayed for America I was made for America I can't let go till she comes around Until the land of the free Is awake and can see And until her conscience has been found.

But when you know that you've got a real friend somewhere, suddenly all the others are so much easier to bear.

Somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go may lie a reason you were alive, but you'll never know.

Let the disappointments pass
Let the laughter fill your glass
Let the illusions last until they shatter
Whatever you might hope to find
among the thoughts that crowd your mind
There won't be many that ever really matter.

I don't know where I'm running now, I'm just running on

Caught between the longing for love, and the struggle for the legal tender, where the sirens sing and the church bells ring, and the junk man pounds his fender. Where the veterans dream of the fight, fast asleep at the traffic light, and the children solemnly wait for the ice cream vendor.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they are not on your road does not mean they have gotten lost.

They sell us the President the same way they sell us our clothes and cars.

Like, What is the least often heard sentence in the English language? That would be: Say, isn't that the banjo player's Porsche parked outside?

I look around for the friends I used to turn to pull me through. Looking into their eyes, I see them running, too.

In the end, they traded their tired wings for the resignation that living brings. And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow for the glitter and the rouge, and in the moment they were swept before the deluge.

As far as those kinds of things, I also played at the concert to call for the release of Nelson Mandela when he was a political prisoner in South Africa. We were celebrating his 70th birthday and calling for his release.

You've had to struggle, you've had to fight
To keep understanding and compassion in sight
You could be laughing at me, you've got the right
But you go on smiling so clear and so bright

I want to find myself a girl who can show me what laughter means, and we'll fill in the missing numbers in each others paint-by-numbers dreams.

The idea that I wrote something that stood for the way I feel about things, and that it lasts, that's probably my favorite thing that I've done.

So what I do, more than play any instrument - I mean, I love to play - but more than that, I write songs. Songs that are about living, about what it's like to be going through all the things that people go through in life.

Self-discovery in songwriting, bringing something forth that's instructive to yourself - some of the best songs that you will ever write are the ones where you didn't have to think about any of that stuff, but nonetheless that's what's happening in the song.

So it's not really whether you talk about politics, but how well were you able to do it. Peter Gabriel and Sting get away with it ... U2 ... the examples are there, of people being able to carry these subjects in the music, and the audience is absolutely able to embrace subjects that aren't just the stuff they already know about. And they're actually able to learn stuff.

Forget what life used to be, you are what you choose to be. It's whatever it is you see that life will become.

Waiting here for Everyman
Make it on your own if you think you can
If you see somewhere to go I understand
I'm not trying to tell you
That I've seen the plan
Turn and walk away if you think I am
But don't think too badly
Of one who's left holding sand
He's just another dreamer,
Dreaming 'bout Everyman.

That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.

Where the search for the truth is conducted with a wink and a nod
And where power and position are equated with the grace of God
These times are famine for the soul while for the senses it's a feast
From the edge of my country, as far as you see, looking east

I've been aware of the time passing by they say in the end it's the wink of an eye and when the morning light comes streaming in you'll get up and do it again

You can take as much as you can from the generation that has preceded you, but then it's up to you to make something new.

Make it on your own if you think you can.If you see somewhere to go, I understand.

It's not like I'm looking to describe something that's only true of my own circumstances. It's beyond. It's way inside, you know. It's reaching inside to something that you have in common with many.

People look around you, the signs are everywhere. You've left it for somebody other than you to be the one who to care.

I'm Glad that the Bush years are behind us

Right around the end of the fifties, college students and young people in general, began to realize that this music was almost like a history of our country - this music contained the real history of the people of this country.

They say it can't be won,
The way the game is run.
But if you choose to stay
You wind up playin' anyway.

No matter how fast I run, I can't get away from me.

English people are so trapped in this class paradigm.

When you turn out the light, I've got to hand it to me. Looks like it's you and me again tonight Rosie.

I'm going to be a happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender.

Now if I seem to be afraidTo live the life that I have made in songWell it's just that I've been losing so long.

Eleven on a scale of ten, honey, let me introduce you to my redneck friend.

I love to read. I love to stretch. In the morning, I get up, and if I'm not in a hurry, I will lie on the floor on a rug, look through some books and magazines, and maybe listen to music and try to do stretching exercises to tune up.

Well, I'm a standing on a cornerIn Winslow, ArizonaAnd such a fine sight to see,It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed FordSlowin' down to have a look at me.

I'm gonna be a happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender. Where the ads take aim and lay their claim to the heart and the soul of the spender. And believe in whatever may lie in those things that money can buy, though true love could have been a contender

Rock me on the water
Sister will you soothe my fevered brow
Rock me on the water
I'll get down to the sea somehow

I taught myself to play the piano, because I wanted to play it.

Looking through a photograph I found inside a drawer
I was taken by a photograph of you.

I followed those highway signs and I've run down those thin white lines.