19 Guy Clark Quotes To Tip Your Hat To

Guy Charles Clark, born November 6, 1941, lived until May 17th, 2016. Guy Clark’s reputation is legendary. He was an acclaimed American folk and country singer-songwriter. To say that Clark was prodigious in his ability to consistently churn out great tunes, would be a vast understatement. Clark released over 20 albums, and his songs have been recorded by other tremendously talented artists like Jimmy Buffett, Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Chris Stapleton.

1. On taking chances

“Ain’t no chance if you don’t take it.”

2. On not knowing the outcome

“I don’t know what the outcome will be. I put a couple away for my grandkids, like that. So I don’t know, who knows? Maybe I’ll start building guitars for a living.”

3. On exercise

“I get pretty much all the exercise I need walking down airport concourses carrying bags.”

4. On following the rules

“There aren’t any rules, as far as anything-and that applies especially to writing songs, whatever gets the point across. So you’re just kind of brought up to feel-in any field, if you say you can do it, do it. There it is.”

5. On being goofy

“I just was apologizing for maybe being a little goofy.”

6. On songwriting

“I have no reason to sit home and write songs all day without going out and playing for the folks. And I have no reason to go play for the folks unless I’m writing new songs so they can sort of feed off one another. And I just try to do the best I can.”

7. On good songs

“If I knew where good songs came from, I’d go there more often.”

8. On things changing

“Things change all the time, and they’ll probably never be the same again. Its just the natural evolution of the human condition. Things change, and whatever it is is what it is. I mean, you try to start second guessing that, you either get rich or die broke.”

9. On being proud of yourself

“I hear this song and I think, man, this is … great. This is the best I ever heard this. I forget I’m the one singing.”

10. On Mary Gauthier

“Mary Gauthier’s great. Yeah, we’ve played a lot of gigs together. She’s really wonderful.”

11. On his love for singing

“I love playing and I love singing, and the writing. There’s kind of a symbiotic relationship between the writing and the playing.”

12. On his first guitar

“All gut strings. Thats just the first kind of guitar I played, it was a nylon string guitar. And to me, its the purest form of guitar making, and I just enjoy doing it.”

13. On the excitement over writing a great song

“I’ve gone a year and not written a song just because I couldn’t think of anything. But I always come back to it because there’s always that little buzz you get when you do something well and sing it out loud to the public. And people clap and tell you how great you are.”

14. On the listener’s interpretation

“Anything that happens after I write a song, that’s fine with me. It’s up to the listener to read into it what they need from it. And that’s part of the reason I write like I do, so I can leave the holes in the right places so people can say, ‘Yeah, that happened to me,’ and they’re able to have their own little fantasy about it.”

15. On the entertainment of music

“Music is supposed to be entertaining and if it touches you emotionally, so much the better. Sometimes you do it to save your own life, not anybody else’s. That’s why I write. I’m not trying to change anybody else’s life or the world, I’m trying to keep from blowing my own brains out. That’s the real point.”

16. On sad songs

“I don’t like to write songs that are depressing or sad. I like to write songs that are about normal life.”

17. On learning how to write songs

“I think the most important thing I’ve learned is that songwriting is a craft that you can learn. You can study it, and you can work at it.”

18. On songs not being finished

“A song is never really finished. It’s like a painting. You can just kind of keep working on it forever if you want.”

19. On songs being like good conversations

“A song should be like a good conversation. It should be something that you can relate to and understand.”