Quotes by James Taylor

I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play every day; and take it in front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.
– James Taylor
Time will take your money, but money won't buy time.
– James Taylor
Though 'Fire and Rain' is very personal, for other people it resonates as a sort of commonly held experience... And that's what happens with me. I write things for personal reasons, and then in some cases it... can be a shared experience.
– James Taylor
That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind.
– James Taylor
Sobering up was responsible for breaking up my marriage. That's what it couldn't stand.
– James Taylor
Performing is a profound experience, at least for me. It's not as if I sit down and play 'Fire and Rain' by myself, just to hear it again. But to offer it up... the energy that it somehow summons live takes me right back, and I do get a reconnection to the emotions.
– James Taylor
People should watch out for three things: avoid a major addiction, don't get so deeply into debt that it controls your life, and don't start a family before you're ready to settle down.
– James Taylor
Music is my living. I enjoy selling my music.
– James Taylor
Music is like a huge release of tension.
– James Taylor
It's probably foolish to expect relationships to go on forever and to say that because something only lasts 10 years, it's a failure.
– James Taylor
If you think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.
– James Taylor
I'm very unstable there's no stability in a musician's life at all. You live on a bus or on the road hand to mouth and you don't know where your money's coming from.
– James Taylor
I'm glad about what's happening to the music business. This last crop of people we had in the 90s, who are going away now, they didn't like music. They didn't trust musicians. They wanted something else from it.
– James Taylor
I know there are people who don't like their audience or like the experience of being recognized or celebrated, but my audience has been very good - they don't bother me and when they do contact me it's usually on the nicest possible terms.
– James Taylor
I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.
– James Taylor
I believe 100 percent in the power and importance of music.
– James Taylor