Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Joni Mitchell, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Joni Mitchell quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 254 Joni Mitchell quotes for you to read and share.
Heaven's full of astronauts and the Lord's on death row. -- Joni Mitchell
We're captive on the carousel of time, we can't return we can only look behind. -- Joni Mitchell
Musically, I would never run dry. Any time I sit down to an instrument, I could write a song. -- Joni Mitchell
And the seasons they go 'round and 'round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game. -- Joni Mitchell
When I was 19 I went to art school. I had six months of teaching myself to play baritone ukulele under my belt, so was sort of a novice folkie ... I was singing folk songs at that time. -- Joni Mitchell
I always thought the women of song don't get along, and I don't know why that is. -- 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 thing that gave me the most pain in life, psychologically, and it gave me tremendous pain psychologically, is man's disrespect for nature. -- Joni Mitchell
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. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining. -- Joni Mitchell
Morgellons is constantly morphing. There are times when it's directly attacking the nervous system, as if you're being bitten by fleas and lice. It's all in the tissue and it's not a hallucination. It was eating me alive, sucking the juices out. I've been sick all my life. -- 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
Keep a good heart. That's the most important thing in life. It's not how much money you make or what you can acquire. The art of it is to keep a good heart. -- Joni Mitchell
I prefer Christmas, which is everybody's holiday. It's just my nature. I don't like to be zeroed in on en masse. -- Joni Mitchell
He's swept with the broom of contempt and the rooms have an empty ring. -- Joni Mitchell
Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone. -- Joni Mitchell
Everybody's saying hell's the hippest way to go. Well, I don't think so, but I'm gonna take a look around it though. -- Joni Mitchell
Lazy reviewers look up other people's reviews and they write the same thing, so you get people writing crap based on crap. -- Joni Mitchell
Just before our love got lost you said
"I am as constant as a northern star"
And I said, constantly in the darkness,
Where's that at?
If you want me I'll be in the bar. -- Joni Mitchell
Laughing and crying, you know it's the same release. -- Joni Mitchell
Everyone I know has attention deficit, and they say it with great pride. It's a bad time to be right. -- Joni Mitchell
They won't give peace a chance, that's just a dream some of us had -- Joni Mitchell
I got in before SoHo was SoHo. It was just Little Italy when I was in there. It's still off the touristy track. It's just away from the Saturday action, the crowds and everything. It's too expensive. It's insane. You've got to be a billionaire to live on Manhattan now. -- Joni Mitchell
It's life's illusions that I recall, I really don't know life at all -- Joni Mitchell
I came upon a child of god, He was walking along the road And I asked him, where are you going And this he told me: I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band I'm going to camp out on the land, I'm going to try an' get my soul free. -- Joni Mitchell
The thing that started me painting originally was seeing Bambi when I was about nine. I was incredibly disturbed by the forest fire that killed Bambi's mother, and that distress gave me the impulse to create something, as a way of dealing with it. -- Joni Mitchell
Lord, there's danger in this land, you get witch hunts and wars when church and state hold hands. -- Joni Mitchell
I'm a very analytical person, a somewhat introspective person; that's the nature of the work I do. -- Joni Mitchell
No one likes to have less than they had before. That's the nature of the human animal. -- Joni Mitchell
Art is short for artificial ... so the art of art is to be as real as you can within this artificial situation ...
In a way it's a lie to get you to see the truth. -- Joni Mitchell
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. -- Joni Mitchell
My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I'm a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to me, 'Girl, you make me see pictures in my head!' and I took that as a great compliment. That's exactly my intention. -- Joni Mitchell
I'm not a pitiable creature. It's just that I suffer very eloquently. -- Joni Mitchell
Bob [Dylan] is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I. -- Joni Mitchell
But you know it's hard to tell
When you're in the spell if it's wrong or if it's real
But you're bound to lose
If you let the blues get you scared to feel -- Joni Mitchell
If I'm censoring for anyone, it's for my parents. They are very old-fashioned and moral people. They still don't understand me that well. -- Joni Mitchell
I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them. -- Joni Mitchell
Well something's lost but something's gained in living every day. -- Joni Mitchell
I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' He gets a bad rap; he's very misunderstood. He's a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers. -- Joni Mitchell
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 of death. That's non-growth. And also that's very bad for the world. -- Joni Mitchell
When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark. -- Joni Mitchell
I'm a fine artist working in a commercial arena, so that's my cross to bear -- Joni Mitchell
White rhythm is waltzes, marches, and the polka. In Africa, rhythm is used for a celebratory groove, but white rhythm doesn't have such an enormous vocabulary of spirits. It's basically militant. -- Joni Mitchell
It's in my stars to invent; I was born on Madame Curie's birthday. I have this need for originals, for innovation. That's why I like Charlie Parker. -- Joni Mitchell
Unlike some of my peers, I haven't really hit a writer's block. When I hit a block I just paint, which is an old crop rotation trick. -- Joni Mitchell
But now it's just another show, you leave em laughing when you go. And if you care, don't let them know, don't give yourself away. -- Joni Mitchell
When the spirit of child's play enters into the creative process, it's a wonderful force and something to be nurtured. -- Joni Mitchell
Buddy Holly and the early rock 'n' roll was no lighter than the way I play. It's very minimal. -- Joni Mitchell
The bands and the roadies, love 'em and leave 'em. It's pleasure to try 'em, but trouble to keep 'em. -- 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
The land of litigation, the courts are like game shows. Take what's behind the curtain the jury cries. -- Joni Mitchell
Oh, the jealousy, the greed is the unraveling. It's the unraveling and it undoes all the joy that could be.
. -- Joni Mitchell
In New York, the street adventures are incredible. There are a thousand stories in a single block. You see the stories in the people's faces. You hear the songs immediately. Here in Los Angeles, there are less characters because they're all inside automobiles. -- Joni Mitchell
I used to be monastic, almost. Now I'm like a Tibetan that has discovered hamburgers and television. I'm catching up on Americana. -- Joni Mitchell
The rock & roll industry is very incestuous, and we have all been close at one time or another. A lot of beautiful music and a lot of beautiful times came from that. A lot of pain, too, because, inevitably, different relationships broke up. -- Joni Mitchell
Rachmaninoff made a musician out of me. His 'Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini' was the piece that sent me into raptures. It spoke to me. To me, it was a tender entreaty for the misunderstood. -- Joni Mitchell
Nobody understood The Reoccurring Dream, but after September 11, when we were coerced to do a national duty and go out and shop, surely people could begin to see what I was getting at. -- Joni Mitchell
Oh it gets so lonely
When you're walking
And the streets are full of strangers -- Joni Mitchell
Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm. They cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable, or mineral. -- Joni Mitchell
I could drink a case of you. -- Joni Mitchell
My parents told me I'd point to a bed of flowers and say 'Pink. Pretty,' before I knew any other words. -- Joni Mitchell
Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980. -- Joni Mitchell
We love our lovin' ... but not like we love our freedom. -- Joni Mitchell
My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species. -- Joni Mitchell
I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead. -- Joni Mitchell
My first four albums covered the usual youth problems - looking for love in all the wrong places - while the next five are basically about being in your 30s. -- Joni Mitchell
I liked playing in small clubs. I really liked holding the attention of thirty or forty people. I never liked the roar of the big crowd. -- Joni Mitchell
I wanna be strong, I wanna laugh along, I wanna belong to the living. Alive, alive, I wanna get up and jive, Wanna wreck my stockings in some jukebox dive. -- Joni Mitchell
When I felt that fame, people were nosing me out, well I moved on. I used traveling names. Wigs, if necessary. -- Joni Mitchell
The songwriting was almost like something I did while I was waiting for my daughter to come back. -- Joni Mitchell
We call for the three great stimulants of the exhausted ones, artifice, brutality, and innocence. -- Joni Mitchell
Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell. -- Joni Mitchell
You snipe so steady, you snub so snide, so rip and ready to diminish and deride. -- Joni Mitchell
Fear is like the wilderland - Stepping stones or sinking sand -- Joni Mitchell
All my battles were with male egos. I'm just looking for equality, not to dominate. But I want to be able to control my vision. -- Joni Mitchell
An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child. -- Joni Mitchell
Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels The dizzy dancing way you feel As every fairy tale comes real I've looked at love that way. -- Joni Mitchell
I never really wanted to be a star. I didn't like entering a room with all eyes on me. I still don't really like the attention of a birthday party. -- Joni Mitchell
What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song. -- Joni Mitchell
Freedom to me is a luxury of being able to follow the path of the heart, to keep the magic in your life. Freedom is necessary for me in order to create, and if I cannot create I don't feel alive. -- Joni Mitchell
There was this mountain village in Russia where my music was getting in on some German radio station. I remember this because music used to get up to Saskatchewan from Texas. Late at night after the local station closed down. -- Joni Mitchell
Whatever it was that I felt was the weak link in my previous project gave me inspiration for the next one. -- 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. -- Joni Mitchell
Edith Piaf knocked my socks off when I was 8, but I didn't know what she was singing about. -- Joni Mitchell
I'm drinking champagne, got the head phones up high, can't numb you out. -- Joni Mitchell
Fold your fleet wings I have brought some dreams to share
A dream that you love someone
A dream that the wars are done -- Joni Mitchell
You win the lasting laurels with your laughter. -- Joni Mitchell
If you're smart or rich or lucky
Maybe you'll beat the laws of man
But the inner laws of spirit
And the outer laws of nature
No man can -- Joni Mitchell
Drag wasn't always counterculture. -- Joni Mitchell
I learned from admiration and osmosis. -- Joni Mitchell
Oh you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
And I would still be on my feet
Oh I would still be on my feet -- Joni Mitchell
I wish I had a river I could skate away on? -- Joni Mitchell
I still believe in the power of the word, that words inspire. -- Joni Mitchell
Some get the gravy, some get the gristle. -- Joni Mitchell
I'm not a kiss-and-teller. I never named names. -- Joni Mitchell
The pirate he will sink you with a kiss, he'll steal your heart and sail away. -- Joni Mitchell
I can't remember anything I ever wrote. -- Joni Mitchell
I like my freedom. I like to do my own grocery shopping. -- Joni Mitchell
Do you want - do you want - do you want to dance with me baby? -- Joni Mitchell
I didn't think I had much of a following in the south. I thought I was anonymous down there so I kept to the south. I found in certain pockets that I was quite recognizable, and I just hit a wig store. -- Joni Mitchell
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. -- Joni Mitchell
Do you see how you hurt me, baby? So I hurt you too. Then we both get so blue. I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, looking for the key to set me free. -- Joni Mitchell
Because Elvis gave 'em cars, you think I'm cheap. -- Joni Mitchell
Will you take me as I am? Strung out on another man ... California, I'm comin' home. -- Joni Mitchell
There'll be icicles and birthday clothes
And sometimes there'll be sorrow -- Joni Mitchell
Daydreamin' drugs the pain of living. -- Joni Mitchell
I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions? -- Joni Mitchell
Paul Simon started piling up a lot of words, more than the bar could handle, and I stopped! -- 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
A woman I knew just drowned herself
The well was deep and muddy
She was just shaking off futility
Or punishing somebody
My friends were calling up all day yesterday
All emotions and abstractions
It seems we all live so close to that line
and so far from satisfaction -- Joni Mitchell
Elusive dreams and vague desires fanned to fiery needs by deadly deeds of falling empires. -- Joni Mitchell
We are stardust, billion year old carbon. we are golden, caught in the devil's bargain. -- Joni Mitchell
A little lawyer on the tube, he said, its so easy now, anyone can sue. -- Joni Mitchell
Land of snap decisions, land of short attention spans, nothing is savored long enough to really understand. -- Joni Mitchell
I'm your biggest fan, California, I'm coming home -- Joni Mitchell
I had made all these rules for myself: I'm not writing social commentary, I'm not writing love songs. -- Joni Mitchell
In terms of fiction, I'd rather go out and have a good time than read a book about someone having a good or bad time. -- Joni Mitchell
you dont know what you got till its gone -- Joni Mitchell
Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl. Most of my best
work came out of it. -- Joni Mitchell
I create by feeling rather than by intellectualizing. -- Joni Mitchell
Inside your own self pity there you swim, in sinking down to drown her voice still haunts you, and only with your laughter can you win. -- Joni Mitchell
I met a redneck on a Grecian isle who did the Goat Dance very well. -- Joni Mitchell
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 is no extra time now. There isn't enough time. -- Joni Mitchell
Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees, please. -- Joni Mitchell
I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said
Go to him, stay with him if you can
But be prepared to bleed -- Joni Mitchell
My family could only afford to get me the box of eight Crayola crayons, but I craved the one with all 24 colours. I wanted magenta and turquoise and silver and gold. -- Joni Mitchell
Heart and humor and humility, he said will lighten up your heavy load. -- Joni Mitchell
With a painting, you don't have to go back and paint it again. -- Joni Mitchell
Happiness is the best facelift. -- Joni Mitchell
In search of love and music my whole life has been
Illumination
Corruption
And diving, diving, diving, diving down
To pick up on every shiny thing -- Joni Mitchell
I could drink a case of you, darlin' ... and I would still be on my feet, yes I would still be on my feet ... -- Joni Mitchell
The God of the Old Testament is the depiction of evil. -- Joni Mitchell
Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star -- Joni Mitchell
Some people are upset to see you doing ordinary things. Those people, if they were a celebrity, they would have an entourage. -- Joni Mitchell
My goal as a writer is more to comfort than to disturb. -- Joni Mitchell
All romantics meet the same fate some day.
Drunk and cynical and boring someone in some dark cafe. -- Joni Mitchell
My husband had an education. He had a degree in Literature. I married into a camp of literary types. -- Joni Mitchell
I don't like being too looked up at or too looked down on. I prefer meeting in the middle to being worshiped or spat out. -- Joni Mitchell
Once I got the open tunings for some reason, I began to get the harmonic sophistication that I heard that my musical fountain inside was excited by. Once I got some interesting chords to play with, my writing began to come. -- Joni Mitchell
My individual, psychological descent coincided, ironically, with my ascent into the public eye. -- Joni Mitchell
I get the urge for going/But I never seem to go, -- Joni Mitchell
People will tell you were they have gone, they'll tell you where to go, but until you get there for yourself you never really know. -- Joni Mitchell
I have lost my credibility as a hit maker because of these side excursions into other branches of music by not being consistent. Consistency seems to be all important. -- Joni Mitchell
Acid, booze, and ass, needles, guns, and grass, lots of laughs. -- Joni Mitchell
I love you when I forget about me. -- Joni Mitchell
Love is a very hard feeling to keep alive. It's a very fragile plant. -- Joni Mitchell
Applause, applause, life is our cause. -- Joni Mitchell
We managed to put together a compilation that had some creativity to it. In the meantime I was listening to the free radio stations and I noticed that during their war coverage they were playing these songs born out of the Vietnam War that were all critical of the soldiers. -- Joni Mitchell
I have one piece of music, since 1997, and I don't see it having lyrics. Where does it go in this world? So I haven't recorded it. -- Joni Mitchell
I believe that I am male and I am female. -- Joni Mitchell
Abstract Expressionism was invented by New York drunks. -- Joni Mitchell
I see the entire world as Eden, and every time you take an inch of it away, you must do so with respect. -- Joni Mitchell
Rationally I have no hope, irrationally I believe in miracles. -- Joni Mitchell
I see music as fluid architecture. -- Joni Mitchell
I didn't like the sound of people gasping at the mere mention of my name. It horrified me. -- Joni Mitchell
Sex sells everything and sex kills. -- Joni Mitchell
Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air and feather canyons everywhere, I've looked at clouds that way. -- Joni Mitchell
You know that it never has been easy
Whether you do or do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of the extremities
Or stick to some straighter line. -- Joni Mitchell
The Hollywood sirens are shrieking, while down some search lit alley runs some lost belief. -- Joni Mitchell
Chase away the demons, and they will take the angels with them. -- Joni Mitchell
Innocence is drowned in anarchy. The best lack conviction given time to think, and the worst are full of passion without mercy. -- Joni Mitchell
I try not to steal from myself, but the modalities create similarities. -- Joni Mitchell
I never loved a man as far as I could pitch my shoe. -- Joni Mitchell
In some ways, my gift for music and writing was born out of tragedy, really, and loss. -- Joni Mitchell
When I think of your kisses my mind see-saws. -- Joni Mitchell
Ira Gershwin, shame on him. I mean, some of the writing. -- Joni Mitchell
I have a tremendous joie de vivre ... alternating with irritability of course. -- Joni Mitchell
But I have a tremendous will to live and a tremendous 'joie de vivre,' alternating with irritability. -- Joni Mitchell
I find a lot of poetry to be narcissistic. -- Joni Mitchell
All I really, really want our love to do is to bring out the best in me and in you too. -- Joni Mitchell
He saw my complications and he mirrored me back simplified, and we laughed how our perfect world would always be denied. -- Joni Mitchell
A few drinks later you're not so choosy when the closing lights strip off the shadows on this strange new flesh you've found. -- Joni Mitchell
Love is touching souls. -- Joni Mitchell
I see bodies as individual things. -- Joni Mitchell
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. -- Joni Mitchell
So many things I would have done, but clouds got in my way. -- Joni Mitchell
Richard got married to a figure skater, and he bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator. -- Joni Mitchell
People used to say nobody can sing my songs but me - they're too personal. -- Joni Mitchell
I dreamed I saw the bombers riding shot gun in the sky and they were turning into butterflies above our nation. -- Joni Mitchell
The times you impress me the most are the times when you don't try. -- Joni Mitchell
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 rejected as well as movements that happened later. -- Joni Mitchell
The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music. -- Joni Mitchell
They'll crucify you for staying the same, and they'll crucify you for change. I'd rather be crucified for changing. -- Joni Mitchell
I like to move around. I travel. I've driven across country by myself. -- Joni Mitchell
We'll laugh and toast to nothing, and smash our empty glasses down. -- Joni Mitchell
Augustine, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are confessional writers and all three make me sick. I have nothing in common with them. -- Joni Mitchell
An artist needs a certain amount of turmoil and confusion. -- Joni Mitchell
I paint my joy and I sing my sorrow. -- Joni Mitchell
We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn't like. It has no resemblance to democracy. -- Joni Mitchell
I lost my daughter at 21. I had to give her up because I was broke, no place to take her, no money to take her. That was very traumatic. -- Joni Mitchell
There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said. -- Joni Mitchell
Everything comes and goes; pleasure moves on too early and trouble leaves too slow -- Joni Mitchell
I'm a little young for retirement. -- Joni Mitchell
I'm a painter first, and a musician second. -- Joni Mitchell
For the first time in my career, I'm working in a fine-arts arena, so I'm finally getting some intelligent reviews. -- Joni Mitchell
I conceived in art college at the age of 20, near the end of term. -- Joni Mitchell
I assume there must be some kind of genetic thrust. My two grandmothers were very different, but both of them were frustrated musicians. -- Joni Mitchell
I live in a box of paints
I'm frightened by the devil
And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid -- Joni Mitchell
This is a nation that has lost the ability to be self-critical, and that makes a lie out of the freedoms. -- Joni Mitchell
I sing my sorrow, and I paint my joy. -- Joni Mitchell
I'm an individual, and an individual can't follow and doesn't want to lead. -- 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
I sang in art school, just to get money to smoke. -- Joni Mitchell
I certainly don't want to be an angry old artist. -- Joni Mitchell
If you see yourself as a kingly type, then you need your serfs and your army and someone around you. -- Joni Mitchell
When I began experimenting, people weren't ready for it. Once it's in its second and third generational stages, people can accept it. -- Joni Mitchell
I think I would go further into fine arts, I think, if I were to continue. -- Joni Mitchell
Fly silly sea bird, no dreams can possess you, no voices can blame you for sun on your wings. -- Joni Mitchell
You know, Neil Young is singing Rock n' roll will never die, and Neil never rocked and rolled in his life. I mean, he rocked, but he didn't roll. He has got no swing in him. -- Joni Mitchell
They used to laugh at me when I refused to ride on all those double decker buses, all because there was no driver on the top. -- Joni Mitchell
Oh, I am a lonely painter / I live in a box of paints ... -- Joni Mitchell
I am a woman of heart and mind, looking for affection and respect, a little passion. -- Joni Mitchell
I have always thought of myself as a painter derailed by circumstance. -- Joni Mitchell
I hang my laundry on the line when I write. -- Joni Mitchell
Rolling Stone hates me. They must have an editorial policy to do me in for many years. -- Joni Mitchell
You feed it all your woes, the ghostly garden grows. -- Joni Mitchell
The only thing I have to give to make you smile, to win you with, are all the mornings still to live. -- Joni Mitchell
America is in a runaway-train position and dragging all the world with it. It's grotesquely mentally ill. -- Joni Mitchell
People were very protective of me. Overly so. I was in the industry for a long time before I had any idea of what drugs people were doing. -- Joni Mitchell
You can give me 400,000 hostile people and I won't even break sweat. If you give me 200 adoring people, my mouth will dry out. -- Joni Mitchell
Won't you stay We'll put on the day And we'll talk in present tenses -- Joni Mitchell
My name had gone stale, and no matter how progressive I got, it was my time to die. -- Joni Mitchell
When I came to California, it was the mecca of the world. Every young person on the planet wanted to be here. -- Joni Mitchell
You've got to keep the child alive; you can't create without it. -- Joni Mitchell
Van Gogh was impulsive. -- Joni Mitchell
Fame is a series of misunderstandings surrounding a name. -- Joni Mitchell
My life came down to being a granny and watching a lot of television. -- Joni Mitchell
The coming of the kids hasn't come out in my art yet. -- Joni Mitchell
Sunlight will renew your pride. -- Joni Mitchell
Because I'm so busy and because I think of myself as a painter, I desperately guard the time that I have to paint. And sometimes I'm irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep. -- Joni Mitchell
When you reach that kind of successful pinnacle, it is the nature of the business and the press and everything that they go about tearing you down. -- Joni Mitchell
I don't know how to sell out. If I tried to sell out I don't think I could. -- Joni Mitchell
I came through folk music simply because it was easy to get into it. -- Joni Mitchell
I've got 50 different tunings in the guitar. -- Joni Mitchell
Musically, I don't think I'd ever dry up. I trust my musical invention. -- Joni Mitchell
Does the moon play only silver when it strums the galaxy? -- Joni Mitchell
I do have this reputation for being a serious person. -- Joni Mitchell
I am as constant as a northern star -- Joni Mitchell
Not to dismiss Gershwin, but Gershwin is the chip; Ellington was the block. -- Joni Mitchell
Eventually, with success, I started to feel more and more isolated - like I didn't have a community of artists. -- Joni Mitchell
I don't like to make fluffy little songs, but now I want to make some light songs. -- Joni Mitchell
Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I knew there was milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges, too. -- Joni Mitchell
I learned a woman is never an old woman. -- Joni Mitchell
We are stardust, we are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden. -- Joni Mitchell
She'll prophesy your death. She won't say when. -- Joni Mitchell
They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum. -- Joni Mitchell
Some turn to Jesus and some turn to heroin. -- Joni Mitchell
I hate show business. -- Joni Mitchell
All the news of home you read, more about the war and of bloody changes. -- Joni Mitchell
I get the same charge from juxtaposition of colors as I do from juxtaposition of chords. -- Joni Mitchell
How does a person create a song? A lot of it is being open to encounter and to be in touch with the miraculous. -- Joni Mitchell
I couldn't see passion as a bad thing. -- Joni Mitchell
I was anti-intellectual to the nth. Basically I liked to dance and paint, and that was about it. -- Joni Mitchell
During times like these, the wise are influential. -- Joni Mitchell
To enjoy my music, you need depth and emotionality. -- Joni Mitchell
