Gordon Lightfoot

“I'm a perfectionist. I'm very much a disciplinarian.”

“I'm not a nostalgic person. I live in the present.”

“Sometimes I don't know where the ideas come from. The only thing I can do is to be ready when they do come.”

“I simply write the songs that I am urged to write by the emotions that are in me.”

“I see my songs as my children.”

“If you want to be a singer, you've got to concentrate on it twenty-four hours a day.”

“The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.”

“You've got to be in shape. You can't be a slob and be a singer.”

“I'm a storyteller, that's what I am.”

“I take my work seriously.”

“My job is to be a tunesmith.”

“I've been lucky. I've had a long run.”

“You have to be able to take criticism.”

“Songwriting is a very solitary business.”

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a song that has a life of its own.”