Quotes About Motivation

I haven't really decided to be an actor yet! I started doing plays when I was about 15 or 16. I only did it because my dad saw a bunch of pretty girls in a restaurant and he asked them where they came from and they said drama group. He said, 'Son, that is where you need to go.'

My son had toyed with the idea of writing and trying to write a little bit, so that kind of gave me the bug to write also.

My son makes me want to be better so that I can be there for him.

The single moment when I knew that I had to get busy and do more was around the death of my son.

Of course, my family has been a big reason for me to come back, especially my son who loves the game of hockey - he was a big reason for me coming back.

One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.

I don't know any other lifestyle. I get up in the morning and I really do feel that the world is my oyster, and I start that way, the same as I would if I were preparing to write a song: put a blank piece of paper up on the piano and you go for it.

When you, like if you sing a song and it gets into your brain that it becomes, it repeats and repeats like an affirmation so I find that quite empowering and quite important to keep my positive attitude to life.

Any one thing can get in the way of you and your brain being comfortable and being inspired. It's the difference between a really big song and a song that never existed.

I wanted my first song to have a good meaning to it and to help a lot of people just to be more confident about themselves.

I used to tell people I slept on the floor, in my songs.

I've done a couple of songs which are not up to the mark. So, mentally, I've set a goal that I should be more dynamic and try and push myself as much as I can.

My brother was a fantastic cheerleader for my development as a musician. He was almost 10 years older than me and would really push me to develop as a songwriter.

It was kind of like songwriter's boot camp. You had to produce. You had to produce fast. You had to learn.

I was a coat-checker at Orso, and all these wonderful actors were coming in, and it was exciting to me, so I started going to classes, and my excuse was, 'I'll be a better songwriter if I can understand how to play a character.' Well, that couldn't be farther from the truth.

I was inspired to make music since I was 7 because my aunt is a songwriter.

If you want to be a songwriter, you've got to obsess over it.

Early in my songwriting career, when I was learning a lot about writing songs, I'd force myself to sit down until I came up with something.

When I recorded my solo album, 'Keep It Hid,' in 2008, I'd gotten more interested in songwriting, inspired by reading Charles Bukowski and connecting with unfancy, interesting language.

It's not that I have resisted songwriting, it's just not something I felt I have had to do. I've just not woken up and thought, I must do this. But I have often heard music that I have instantly felt 'I have to sing that song'.

Pressure has always been more of a friend than a foe for me with songwriting.

Nothing can stop a great song, so just keep songwriting.

I do feel pressure internally and externally to put out music, but that excites me because I love songwriting, and this brings me back to why I got in music in the first place, so I'm excited about that.

Of course, you can't teach songwriting. You can only encourage people to do it and help them to sort out for themselves what they want to achieve, and get a list of exercises together that improves the craft and gives them more access to the craft of writing good songs.