Joni Mitchell Quotes

(about her experience as a student in school) All they did was, she said something and you said something back. From here on in, I'm not even going to try unless they ask us a question that nobody knows the answer to.

at that point, that's when I forged my identity as an artist. At 8, I, you know, rebelled against the church and I rebelled against the educational system. I stepped outside the box and forged my identity as an artist.

I've got nervous energy like a kid, still.

I've always been a painter. I didn't come to it late. I was always the school artist. I came to music late, you know, relatively. I mean, I picked up — I tried it at 8. I took a year of piano lessons and wrote my first song when I was 8, wrote it out in notes.

I feel more ambidextrous: I suffer, I enjoy; I suffer, I enjoy.

I don’t think of myself as an intellectual...It’s a nice place to visit; I wouldn’t want to live there. I spend as little time there as possible.

I don’t think of myself as confessional. That’s a name that was put on me. The confessional poets like [Sylvia] Plath, whom I read later when they started calling me confessional, most of their stuff seemed contrived to me and not as greatly honest as it was touted to be. I never wanted to act the part of the poet, with pearls of language and wisdom falling from my lips...I’ve always used the songwriting process as a self-analysis of sorts. Like the Blue album – people were kind of shocked at the intimacy. It was peculiar in the pop arena at that time, because you were supposed to portray yourself as bigger than life. I remember thinking, “Well, if they’re going to worship me, they should know who they’re worshiping.”

I was kind of a media dropout. I was lucky if I could name the president. I was much more inner-world oriented.

(about the label "female songwriter") It implies limitations...They tend to lump me always with groups of women. I always thought, “They don’t put Dylan with the Men of Rock; why do they do that to me with women?”

It’s a funny thing about happiness. You can strive and strive and strive to be happy, but happiness will sneak up on you in the most peculiar ways. I feel happy suddenly. I don’t know why. Some days, the way the light strikes things. Or for some beautifully immature reason like finding myself running to the kitchen to make myself some toast. Happiness comes to me even on a bad day. In very, very strange ways. I’m very happy in my life right now.

any acts of frustration or concern or anxiety in my life are all peripheral to a very solid core. A very strong, continuing course I’ve been following. All this other stuff is just the flak that you get for engaging in the analytical process in the first place. Even Freud knew that; to me it was the hippest thing he ever said: “Dissection of personality is no way to self-knowledge.” All you get out of that is literature, not necessarily peace of mind. It’s a satisfying, but dangerous, way to learn about yourself.

I like to work myself up to a state of enthusiasm about anything I do, otherwise, what’s the point?

I think if you’re healthy, aging can be quite a beautiful process, and I think we’ve created an artificial problem for ourselves.

it’s a funny time for women. We demand a certain sensitivity. We’ve made our outward attacks at machoism, right, in favor of the new sensitive male. But we’re just at the fledgling state of our liberty where we can’t handle it. I think we ask men to be sensitive and equal, but deep down think it’s unnatural. And we really want them to be stronger than us. So you get into this paradoxical thing.

Misery knows no rent bracket