Keep it in tune with the times, but don't write with the specific purpose of trying to create a hit. If you're doing it strictly to make money, you're crazy. There are easier ways to make money.

Write what you feel. Write because of that need for expression.

A rhyme doesn't make a song.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning could write a poem two pages long. Could she have brought it to a music publisher?

My father assigned me to keep his scrapbooks. At first I was interested in reading only his rave notices, but I got interested in reading what the critics were saying about whether the play was good or not.

Love is the reason you were born.