Quotes by Joni Mitchell

About Joni Mitchell:

Roberta Joan "Joni" Mitchell is a Canadian singer-songwriter and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto. In 1965, she moved to the United States and began touring. Some of her original songs ("Urge for Going", "Chelsea Morning", "Both Sides, Now", "The Circle Game") were covered by folk singers, allowing her to sign with Reprise Records and record her debut album in 1968.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I don't like being too looked up at or too looked down on. I prefer meeting in the middle to being worshiped or spat out.

Joni Mitchell

If I'm censoring for anyone, it's for my parents. They are very old-fashioned and moral people. They still don't understand me that well.

Joni Mitchell

The songwriting was almost like something I did while I was waiting for my daughter to come back.

Joni Mitchell

I have always thought of myself as a painter derailed by circumstance.

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 a...

Joni Mitchell

I do have this reputation for being a serious person.

Joni Mitchell

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

Joni Mitchell

I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejected as well as movements that happened later.

Joni Mitchell

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

Joni Mitchell

I can't remember anything I ever wrote.

Joni Mitchell

With a painting, you don't have to go back and paint it again.

Joni Mitchell

I couldn't see passion as a bad thing.

Joni Mitchell

When I began experimenting, people weren't ready for it. Once it's in its second and third generational stages, people can accept it.

Joni Mitchell

I see bodies as individual things.

Joni Mitchell

I'd had a rough childhood.

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

We love our lovin'....but not like we love our freedom.

Joni Mitchell

Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone.

Joni Mitchell

you dont know what you got till its gone

Joni Mitchell

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

Joni Mitchell

Author Bio

  • NameJoni Mitchell
  • DescriptionCanadian musician
  • AliasesRoberta Joan Anderson
  • BornNovember 7, 1943
  • CountryCanada
  • ProfessionSinger; Songwriter; Painter; Singer-songwriter; Artist; Musician
  • WorksBoth Sides; Big Yellow Taxi; Carey; Got 'til It's Gone
  • AwardsPolar Music Prize; Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame; Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award; Canadian Music Hall Of Fame; Canada's Walk Of Fame; Canadian Songwriters Hall Of Fame; Companion Of The Order Of Canada