The Best Joni Mitchell quotes

All I really, really want our love to do is to bring out the best in me and in you too. — Joni Mitchell

We love our lovin’….but not like we love our freedom. — 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

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

Love is a very hard feeling to keep alive. It’s a very fragile plant. — Joni Mitchell

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

Love is touching souls. — 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 couldn’t see passion as a bad thing. — 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

The only thing I have to give to make you smile, to win you with, are all the mornings still to live. — 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

Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees, please. — 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

Fame is a series of misunderstandin gs surrounding a name. — Joni Mitchell

Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell. — 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

Musically, I don’t think I’d ever dry up. I trust my musical invention. — Joni Mitchell

I could drink a case of you. — Joni Mitchell

Abstract Expressionism was invented by New York drunks. — Joni Mitchell

Something’s lost, but something’s gained, in living everyday. — Joni Mitchell

The Hollywood sirens are shrieking, while down some search lit alley runs some lost belief. — 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’ve got 50 different tunings in the guitar. — Joni Mitchell

I don’t know who I am but you know, life is for learning. — Joni Mitchell

My life came down to being a granny and watching a lot of television. — 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’ve looked at life from both sides now…from win and lose, and still somehow it’s life’s illusions I recall I really don’t know life at all. — 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 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

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

An artist needs a certain amount of turmoil and confusion. — Joni Mitchell

The pirate he will sink you with a kiss, he’ll steal your heart and sail away. — 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

Heart and humor and humility, he said will lighten up your heavy load. — Joni Mitchell

I am a woman of heart and mind, looking for affection and respect, a little passion. — Joni Mitchell

My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species. — Joni Mitchell

People used to say nobody can sing my songs but me, they’re too personal. — Joni Mitchell

I’m a method actress in my songs, which is why it’s hard to sing them. — Joni Mitchell

I don’t like to make fluffy little songs, but now I want to make some light songs. — 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 always thought the women of song don’t get along, and I don’t know why that is. — Joni Mitchell

What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid–song. — Joni Mitchell

I try not to steal from myself, but the modalities create similarities. — Joni Mitchell

We’re captive on the carousel of time, we can’t return we can only look behind. — 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

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

My name had gone stale, and no matter how progressive I got, it was my time to die. — 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

When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it’s time for artists to make their mark. — 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

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

When I was 19 I went to art school. I had six months of teaching myself to play baritone ukulele under my belt so I was sort of a novice folkie… I was singing folk songs at that time. — Joni Mitchell

Musically, I would never run dry. Any time I sit down to an instrument, I could write a song. — Joni Mitchell

There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said. — 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

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

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

No one likes to have less than they had before. That’s the nature of the human animal. — Joni Mitchell