Quotes by Bruce Cockburn - Page 2

I wanted to play rock and roll when I started playing. Nobody at that time ever thought about songwriting. You sang songs, that's all. You sang other people's songs. That's all there were.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Rock And Roll
Rocks
Song
Songwriting
Time People Nobody
Sang
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We all grow up with anger. It's part of the human condition. But what do you do with that? It seems obvious to me that you've got to use it for something, but you have to separate it from your ego.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Ego
Growing Up
Use
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Once you tie anger and ego together then you're a monster, at least a latent one. So you have to be able to separate those things before you are going to be able to do anything useful with your anger.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Ego
Ties
Together
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I always write the lyrics first. There are one or two exceptions over the years, but that's pretty much the way it's been. The process of applying music to words is a bit like scoring a film. You've got imagery.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Two
Writing
Years
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My models for graceful aging are guys like John Lee Hooker and Mississippi John Hurt, who never stopped working till they dropped, as I fully expect to be doing, and just getting better as musicians and as human beings.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Get Better
Guy
Hurt
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Here's Iraq, where irrigation was invented, where law was invented, where writing was invented. All these things that we consider necessities of civilization started there. And the people who live there damn well know that.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Civilization
Law
Writing
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Everything that makes a society run is broken in Iraq. The only real structure is the people's own sense of themselves as Iraqis, which was very strong. They're a proud people, and they trace their historic roots way, way back.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Running
Real
Strong
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There's roads, and there's roads, And they call. Can't you hear it? Roads of the earth And roads of the spirit The best roads of all Are the ones that aren't certain. One of those is where you'll find me 'Til they drop the big curtain.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Travel
Earth
Spirit
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If I try to understand what it means to be a Christian, I look at the two instructions that were given in the Bible that are paramount, and those are to love God with all your heart and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. That's it.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Bible
Christian
Heart
Mean
Neighbor
Paramount
Love God Heart
Instructions
To Love
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We're confronted with great darkness as a species right now as spiritual creatures on this planet. I don't think it's hopeless, and I don't want 'You've Never Seen Everything' to make people feel hopeless. But I think we've got to call a spade a spade.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Hopeless
Confronted
Spade
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I watch the confusion of friends all numb with love moving like stray dogs to the anthem of night long conversations of pulsing rhythms and random voltage voices in spite of themselves graceful as these raindrops creeping spermlike across the car window.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Friendship
Dog
Moving
Night
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I did a lot of writing for a lot of different kinds of bands that I was in and out of during those five years and that left me with a little body of songs that I liked better when I played alone, so I ended up going out solo and very soon made my first album.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Different Kinds
Solo
Song
Writing
Years
Alone Me Better
Album
Ended
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I like to think that if it hadn't gone as well as it has, if I wasn't able to make a living off of playing music, I would still be playing the music. But, of course, I wouldn't likely have had the opportunity to travel, and a lot of the places have inspired songs.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Opportunity
Playing Music
Song
Thinking
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A number of Iraqis told us they had welcomed the U.S. forces as liberators initially but in the intervening months, they had come to feel that they had swapped one oppressive regime for another. The Iraqis did exchange one oppression for a lighter kind, in some ways.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Months
Numbers
Way
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I'm particularly attuned to lyrics, and very often a bad set of lyrics will ruin a song for me, while my friends will be just grooving on the music. I don't mean that it has to be about anything in particular, but there has to be some art applied to it, simple or otherwise.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Art
Mean
Song
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Sometimes I catch myself doing something that I've already done. The more I've done, the more that's likely to happen. Then I just throw it away. I wait until I've got the right way of getting a thing done, which means my songwriting proceeds at a very slow pace. But it's the only way I can really work.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Mean
Pace
Waiting
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It sounds strange to say it, but you can be in a war zone and have a lot of fun. Even though war is essentially pain on all sides, human beings have the capacity to enjoy themselves. The soldiers are mostly young people, full of enthusiasm and energy, and that's an exciting thing for an old guy like me.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
War
Capacity
Enthusiasm
Exciting
Fun
Human Beings
Pain
Sides
Strange
Zone
Essentially
Mostly
Old Guy
Soldiers
War Zone
Young People
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Going to places like Honduras, Nicaragua, and various African countries you get to see very clearly what the cause and effect is. We finance the obnoxious elites in those countries and they exploit their people so we don't have to say that we're doing the exploiting but nevertheless we are benefiting from it.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Country
Nicaragua
People
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The people who have impressed me most - and the closest I've come to having heroes - are the people who have devoted their lives to making things better for others. These are people whose names you never hear, people who work for Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, and other humanitarian groups. They're just out there in the world, doing stuff.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Doctors
Hero
Names
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Politics is a part of life and art is about life. It doesn't mean that all the art has to be about politics - in fact, heaven forbid. But politics is a totally legitimate area of focus for any art, whether it's painting or songwriting or anything else, as much as sex is, as much as spirituality is, as much as any other behavior of people is.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Art
Mean
Sex
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I've been accused of being a little pedantic here and there, but I don't buy that criticism. I'm telling it like I see it. You don't have to buy it. You don't have to like it. You don't have to listen to it at all. I'm not trying to convince people of things, other than the fact that I'm trying to make as vivid as I can my own feelings and experiences.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Feelings
People
Trying
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Music itself isn't enough to completely wear down my stash of anger. And I don't have all that much more to be angry about than anyone else. It's not like I was abused as a kid or anything. I had a pretty comfortable childhood with parents who took good care of me. But resentment exists, and some of it goes into the music. Some of it goes into physical activity.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
Kids
Childhood
Parent
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There's so many ways in which Canada and America are inextricably connected politically, economically, socially. There's no stepping away. But at the same time, we don't have a say. Canada is a different country. Sometimes I think of it as Finland in the Soviet era. We're totally free, but we're totally free to agree, basically. If we disagree too heartily or over too sensitive an issue, then we pay a price for that.
Bruce Cockburn / Guitarist
America
Country
Thinking
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Bruce Cockburn Quotes - Page 2

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