199 Quotes by Neil Diamond

I’m not really comfortable in any one spot.

I definitely don’t feel like I’m 71. I feel like I did when I was – between 30 and 40. The body ages. The mind doesn’t.

I’ve found for the last couple of years that the things that I can become most deeply involved with are songs that reflect my real feelings about things and so that what I’ve been writing about.

I’ve always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I’ll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.

Touch a man who can’t walk up right, and that lame man, he’s gonna fly.

I’ve always accepted some kind of deity, especially as a songwriter.

When I need my wife or when I need companionship or someone to talk to, I need it, like, now. So my wife will have to give up whatever she's doing at that moment to tend to my needs. And, in the same way, I would tend to hers. That's not such an easy thing to do.

The cardinal rule for any performer is that they should know themselves before they enter the spotlight, and I didn't. I was just Neil and I did what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to get married, so I got married. I was supposed to get a job, so I looked for work.

It was a real hand-to-mouth existence in those early days - I'd have whatever dry cereal there was in the house for breakfast, 30 cents to spend on lunch and a hot dog for dinner. I did that for years. So there was definitely a hunger in me, of various kinds, to succeed.