Explore Quotes by Joni Mitchell

I conceived in art college at the age of 20, near the end of term.

Edith Piaf knocked my socks off when I was 8, but I didn't know what she was singing about.

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?

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.

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

For the first time in my career, I'm working in a fine-arts arena, so I'm finally getting some intelligent reviews.

Eventually, with success, I started to feel more and more isolated - like I didn't have a community of artists.

I'm a very analytical person, a somewhat introspective person; that's the nature of the work I do.

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

No one likes to have less than they had before. That's the nature of the human animal.

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.

I used to be monastic, almost. Now I'm like a Tibetan that has discovered hamburgers and television. I'm catching up on Americana.

The thing that gave me the most pain in life, psychologically, and it gave me tremendous pain psychologically, is man's disrespect for nature.

Buddy Holly and the early rock 'n' roll was no lighter than the way I play. It's very minimal.

I do have this reputation for being a serious person.

Everyone I know has attention deficit, and they say it with great pride. It's a bad time to be right.

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.

My individual, psychological descent coincided, ironically, with my ascent into the public eye.

I'm a little young for retirement.

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

I had made all these rules for myself: I'm not writing social commentary, I'm not writing love songs.