110+ Joni Mitchell Quotes On Art, Folk And Poetic

Joni Mitchell is a Canadian musician and singer-songwriter. She is widely regarded as one of the most influential and important female artists in popular music history. She has released 19 studio albums, including the iconic Blue and Court and Spark, and has won multiple Grammy Awards. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Joni Mitchell on love, life, art.

Top 10 Joni Mitchell Quotes

1. We're captive on the carousel of time, we can't return we can only look behind.
2. 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.
3. We are stardust, we are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Oh, the jealousy, the greed is the unraveling. It's the unraveling and it undoes all the joy that could be. .
7. Ira Gershwin, shame on him. I mean, some of the writing.
8. Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees, please.
9. I am as constant as a northern star
10. 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 Image Quotes

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

Joni Mitchell Short Quotes

• Sorrow is easy to express and so hard to tell.
• Rationally I have no hope, irrationally I believe in miracles.
• Lord, there's danger in this land, you get witch hunts and wars when church and state hold hands.
• They won't give peace a chance, that's just a dream some of us had
• All romantics meet the same fate some day. Drunk and cynical and boring someone in some dark cafe.
• When I think of your kisses my mind see-saws.
• Fly silly sea bird, no dreams can possess you, no voices can blame you for sun on your wings.
• The God of the Old Testament is the depiction of evil.
• They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
• Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.

Joni Mitchell Quotes About Love

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; hes very misunderstood. Hes a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers. — 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

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

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

In search of love and music My whole life has been Illumination Corruption And diving, diving, diving, diving, Diving down to pick up every shiny thing — Joni Mitchell

I love you when I forget about me. — Joni Mitchell

I never loved a man as far as I could pitch my shoe. — 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

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

Love is touching souls. — Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell Quotes About Life

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 don't know who I am but you know, life is for learning. — 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

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

It's life's illusions that I recall, I really don't know life at all — Joni Mitchell

My life came down to being a granny and watching a lot of television. — Joni Mitchell

Applause, applause, life is our cause. — 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

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

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

Joni Mitchell Quotes About Art

I'm a fine artist working in a commercial arena, so that's my cross to bear — 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

I sang in art school, just to get money to smoke. — Joni Mitchell

The Hollywood sirens are shrieking, while down some search lit alley runs some lost belief. — 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

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

I think I would go further into fine arts, I think, if I were to continue. — Joni Mitchell

The coming of the kids hasn't come out in my art yet. — Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell Quotes About Music

I see music as fluid architecture. — Joni Mitchell

But now old friends are acting strange They shake their heads, they say I've changed Well something's lost, but something's gained In living every day — 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

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

Will you take me as I am? Strung out on another man...California, I'm comin' home. — 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

In some ways, my gift for music and writing was born out of tragedy, really, and loss. — 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 paint my joy and I sing my sorrow. — Joni Mitchell

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

Joni Mitchell Quotes About Kind

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

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 like my freedom. I like to do my own grocery shopping. People do recognize you. They are kind of shocked. Some people like it. It makes them feel at ease. It confirms their hopes that you are in fact similar to them. — 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

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

Joni Mitchell Quotes About Roll

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

Rolling Stone hates me. They must have an editorial policy to do me in for many years. — 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 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

Joni Mitchell Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

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

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

Land of snap decisions, land of short attention spans, nothing is savored long enough to really understand. — 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

Some get the gravy, some get the gristle. — Joni Mitchell

If you see yourself as a kingly type, then you need your serfs and your army and so on around you. — Joni Mitchell

Sunlight will renew your pride. — Joni Mitchell

Heaven's full of astronauts and the Lord's on death row. — Joni Mitchell

In a pure anonymous encounter you find a world alive and full of character. In New York, the street adventures are incredible. There are a thousand stories in a single block. You see the stories in people's faces. You hear the songs immediately. Here, in Los Angeles, there are fewer characters because they are all inside automobiles. — 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

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

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

My childhood was very difficult. I had every childhood disease and then some, but my parents didnt mollycoddle me. They left me to fight those battles on my own. I guess that was very Canadian, very stoic. But its good. I had to become a warrior. I had to give up hope and find a substitute for hope that would be far more stable. — Joni Mitchell

Sex sells everything and sex kills. — Joni Mitchell

There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said. — 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 don't like being too looked up at or too looked down on. I prefer meeting in the middle to being worshipped or spat out. — Joni Mitchell

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

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

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

Drag wasn't always counterculture. — Joni Mitchell

Paul Simon started piling up a lot of words, more than the bar could handle, and I stopped! — Joni Mitchell

Some turn to Jesus and some turn to heroin. — 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

Not to dismiss Gershwin, but Gershwin is the chip; Ellington was the block. — Joni Mitchell

I was anti-intellectual to the nth. Basically I liked to dance and paint, and that was about it. — 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

Happiness is the best facelift. — 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 always thought of myself as a painter derailed by circumstance. — 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

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

My parents told me I'd point to a bed of flowers and say 'Pink. Pretty,' before I knew any other words. — Joni Mitchell

I learned a woman is never an old woman. — Joni Mitchell

I'm your biggest fan, California, I'm coming home — 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

We'll laugh and toast to nothing, and smash our empty glasses down. — 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

I can't remember anything I ever wrote. — Joni Mitchell

I believe that I am male and I am female. — Joni Mitchell

We love our lovin'....but not like we love our freedom. — Joni Mitchell

you dont know what you got till its gone — Joni Mitchell

I could drink a case of you. — Joni Mitchell

Let light hearts remake us. — 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

Richard got married to a figure skater, and he bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator. — Joni Mitchell

There's a man who's been out sailing In a decade full of dreams And he takes her to a schooner And he treats her like a queen Bearing beads from California With their amber stones and green He has called her from the harbor He has kissed her with his freedom He has heard her off to starboard In the breaking and the breathing Of the water weeds While she was busy being free — Joni Mitchell

I'm drinking champagne, got the head phones up high, can't numb you out. — Joni Mitchell

The Blue album, there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there, either. — Joni Mitchell

Chase away the demons, and they will take the angels with them. — Joni Mitchell

Because Elvis gave 'em cars, you think I'm cheap. — 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'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them. — Joni Mitchell

I didn't like the sound of people gasping at the mere mention of my name. It horrified me... — 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

They paved paradise and put up a parkin lot With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you got till it's gone — Joni Mitchell

Life Lessons by Joni Mitchell

1. Joni Mitchell's music can teach us to appreciate the beauty and complexity of life, and to embrace our own unique perspectives and experiences.
2. Her lyrics often explore themes of love, loss, and the importance of self-reflection and growth.
3. Through her music, Joni Mitchell encourages us to be true to ourselves and to find our own paths in life.