100 Quotes by John Mayer
John Mayer, a contemporary musician of profound versatility, has made an indelible mark on the music industry. Born in 1977, Mayer's musical journey traverses genres like pop, rock, blues, and folk, showcasing his virtuosity as a singer-songwriter and guitarist. With hits such as "Your Body Is a Wonderland" and "Waiting on the World to Change," he crafts melodies that are both emotionally resonant and commercially successful. Beyond his catchy tunes, Mayer's distinctive guitar playing, characterized by a blend of intricate fingerpicking and expressive solos, has earned him acclaim among fellow musicians and enthusiasts alike. What sets Mayer apart is his ability to infuse his lyrics with introspection and vulnerability, addressing personal struggles, relationships, and societal commentary. His album "Continuum" exemplifies this fusion, navigating themes of love, identity, and social awareness. Mayer's contributions extend to collaborations with legendary artists, further emphasizing his role as a bridge between musical generations. His impact lies in his capability to channel a range of emotions through his music, creating an enduring connection with audiences worldwide.
John Mayer Quotes
I'm a mess of unfinished thoughts. (Meaning)
Fear is a friend who's misunderstood (Meaning)
Don't be scared to walk alone. Don't be scared to like it. (Meaning)
You look so good it hurts sometimes. (Meaning)
So scared of getting older, I'm only good at being young. (Meaning)
I am invincible, as long as I'm alive. (Meaning)
Waiting on the World to Change. (Meaning)
I know the heart of life is good. (Meaning)
Numb is the new deep. (Meaning)
I am who I am because of Dave Matthews Band (Meaning)
I am tempted to keep the car in drive, And leave it all behind... (Meaning)
I'm the only person I know who's got a bunch of money. (Meaning)
Someday, everything will make perfect sense. So for now, laugh at the confusion, smile through the tears, be strong and keep reminding your self that everything happens for a reason.
A man's got two shots for jewelry: a wedding ring and a watch. The watch is a lot easier to get on and off than a wedding ring.
High School is like a spork: it's a crappy spoon and a crappy fork, so in the end it's just plain useless.
People want to see musicians sing things that come from their own mind and own heart in real time, responding to the moment for them.
Life is like a box of crayons. Most people are the 8-color boxes, but what you're really looking for are the 64-color boxes with the sharpeners on the back. I fancy myself to be a 64-color box, though I've got a few missing.
Don't be scared to walk alone. Don't be scared to like it.
Sometimes I wish that I was the weather, you'd bring me up in conversation forever. And when it rained, I'd be the talk of the day.
Sometimes I wish that I was a bong hit, you'd let me in and you would love every minute.
If you had started doing anything two weeks ago, by today you would have been two weeks better at it.
The biggest mistake I made and what cost me a lot of enjoyment in my life, was assuming that everybody cared. They don’t.
The saddest kind of sad is the sad that tries not to be sad. You know, when sad tries to bite its lip and not cry, and smile and say, "No I'm happy for you"? Thats when it's really sad.
Anybody who's made it will tell you, you can make it. Anyone who hasn't made it will tell you, you can't
Whenever they say it can’t be done, remind them that they make a jellybean that tastes exactly like popcorn.
Pain throws your heart to the ground. Love turns the whole thing around. Fear is a friend who's misunderstood. But I know the heart of life is good.
I just wish they'd put a new word in the dictionary bigger than love because love just doesn't describe what I feel.
May this be the year that things go your way most of the time, and when they don't, may you have great friends to lean on.
When autumn comes, it doesn't ask. It just walks in, where it left you last. And you never know, when it starts; until there's fog inside the glass around your summer heart.
I have masturbated myself out of serious problems in my life.
I'm interested in living more of a life that's invisible to everybody and more vibrant to a fewer people that are in my life.
There are people in the world who have the power to change our values.
I'm a mess of unfinished thoughts.
They say stay in the lines, but there's always something better on the other side.
It's better to say too much, than never to say what you need to say again.
Very few things in life are worthy of the kind of emotional distress we put ourselves through.
Fear is a friend who's misunderstood
When you're dreaming with a broken heart, the waking up is the hardest part. You roll outta bed and down on your knees and for a moment you can hardly breathe.
I mean there are so many different colors of life, of feeling, of articulation... so when I meet someone who's an 8-color type... I'm like, 'Hey girl, magenta!' and she's like, 'Oh, you mean purple!' and she goes off on her purple thing, and I'm like, 'No - I want magenta!'
Everybody is just a stranger, but that's the danger in going my own way.
I went to my library, right? And I started to research the Bill of Rights and I did not technically find anything that said all Americans shall eat shrimp with whoever they like. But, I found some things that are close enough to infer that I am within my legal rights to enjoy seafood with whomever I choose.
My fear is that I go up to the girl of my dreams and say 'I'm sorry, but I've got to say hello to you,' and she slides the stool back and gets up and walks away, saying, 'Not for me, Bub. I don't want anything to do with you.'
It’s my failure to sound like my heroes that’s allowed me to sound like myself.
I'd like to think the best of me was still hiding up in my sleeve.
Sometimes you tell someone to never call you again; and then the phone rings and you hope it's them - it's the most twisted logic of all time.
Have you ever loved somebody, loved her completely, but had to end the relationship for life reasons?
I've never been a bad boy.
So scared of getting older, I'm only good at being young.
Sometimes I get so bold and I'm so confident about what I'm doing that I actually try to be more of a dork because it's a really liberating feeling to experience what it's like to not care.
Sometimes it feels like my life is just one long day.
I hope that what it comes down to at the end of the day is that people believe that I believe what I'm singing. It comes down to being believable. You don't have to be likeable; generally, though, I think I am.
I am who I am because of Dave Matthews Band
I think that one of the greatest connections and attractions you can have with somebody, is understanding somebody.
You get to a certain age where you prepare yourself for happiness. Sometimes you never remember to actually get happy.
This is not to say, there never comes a day I'll take my chances and start again. And when I look behind on all my younger times, I'll have to thank the wrongs that led me to a love so strong.
Most times when you try to be all things to all people, you end up being nothing.
I've figured out my learning curve. I can look at something and somehow know exactly how long it will take for me to learn it.
Fathers be good to your daughters, daughters will love like you do. Girls become lovers, who turn into mothers, so mothers be good to your daughters, too.
I can't even explain to you how terrible that feels, that I equate dating a woman with punishment, shame, guilt, disappointment, reproach, reprimand, persecution. It's a nightmare.
Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix.
I hate being the heartbreaker. Hate it. If I date somebody and it doesn't work out, it's another nightmare for me.
I know the heart of life is good.
By the time I recognize this moment, this moment will be gone. . . But I will bend the light, pretend that it somehow lingered on
You make a choice in your life, and it affects your life in all the ways, good and bad.
I am beginning to know what it feels like to be a woman. To have people looking at you all the time. And I'm sorry ladies, I had no idea! But people are looking at me all the time. It's like I have musical boobies!
Friends, lovers, or nothing, we can really only ever be one.
I believe that my life's gonna see the love I give returned to me.
I need some kind of emotional stake in it to write my lyrics, assuming that place. It might just be an emotion I understand but am not currently experiencing necessarily.
I love you more than songs can say, but I can't keep running after yesterday.
Half of my heart's got a real good imagination, half of my heart's got you. . .Half of my hearts got a right mind to tell you that half of my heart won't do.
Love is like grass. If you fall on it, it may leave a stain and some temporary pain. But you'll get over the pain, it will eventually stop hurting. Now maybe the stain ruined your favourite pair of jeans, or maybe it was nothing special that was ruined, but either way the stain remains there. And with time, it will begin to fade, but it will always be there, a permanent reminder that you, too, once fell.
Anybody who tells you to have a fallback plan are people who had a fallback plan, didn’t follow their dreams, and don’t want you to either.
I'm a good music provider, and I'm fine with that. I'm a quality music manufacturer.
I don't jerk off because I'm horny. I'm sort of half-chick. It's like District 9. I can fire alien weapons. I can insert a tampon. No, I do it because I want to take a brain bath. It's like a hot whirlpool for my brain, in a brain space that is 100 percent agreeable with itself.
Numb is the new deep, done with the old me, and talk is the same cheap it's been.
I'm not deluded enough to think that everyone who knows my name is a listener. You know, I hope that part of that interest - part of that public interest - has to do with me still making records that people like.
I'm singing what I want to sing based on the emotion of what that day feels like. That's what comes out of my mouth and guitar. That impacts people. They know anything can happen.
If you're good, and you know you're good, and you know you're better than those people getting paid to do it, you still have to have an open ear….Nobody's music is the enemy of your music…The idea that someone else has made it when they shouldn't have made it is toxic thinking.
I have these accidents, these mistakes, these self-inflicted wounds, and then I tear my head to shreds about it for days.
You can't spell 'developer' without 'devel.'
I am invincible, as long as I'm alive.
You look so good it hurts sometimes.
I knew what I wanted to do when I was 13 and I had to go through four years of high school to get out. That's a blessing, because I never had to lay on my bed staring up at the ceiling going, 'What am I going to do with my life?'
I came from the last couple of years in a generation where we didn't have a computer around so we didn't waste as much time on the internet as we do now so I had large chuncks of time which to devote to doing something.
I'm having the time of my life figuring out this next move.
They read all the books, but they can't find the answers.
If you get half a million, at a certain stage you probably will get 4 million people, if they are able to hear it. The touring thing is unbelievable. It really is amazing from what we did the last tour even to what we are doing now.
I'm willing to make compromises based on someone I think is the one, but I think it's psychologically important to people when they're famous to be the only famous person they know.
So scared of getting older I'm only good at being young So I play the numbers game to find a way to say that life has just begun.
And i start sleeping and dreaming and i think i'll dream about you, all through the night.
I find myself in situations that I know would be unbelievable pictures and I have to gauge, Is this worth taking the camera out? Am I gonna lose the moment? Am I gonna get a dirty look from Sting?
I've realized you can use a fork as a spoon if you use it rapidly enough.
There's a certain lack of gimmickry to what I do that makes people in England go: 'Where's the thing?
We're supposed to lose our friends to time, at an age when we're ready to agree to the terms of having lived a long life. Not now.
God only knows how much I'd love you if you let me, but I can't break through at all.
In the quest to be clever, I completely forgot about the people that I love and that love me.
I've never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, 'We're full.'
Trying to impress my mother with words was one of my favourite pursuits.
Waiting on the World to Change.
Songs can be Trojan horses, taking charged ideas and sneaking past the ego's defenses and into the open mind.
She's perfect, so flawless, I'm not impressed.
My life's a sequel to a movie where the actors' names have changed.
I'm not as surprised in going from playing 1,000 seats to 4,000 seats as I was from 100 to 500 seats.
Maybe someday you can accuse somebody of being a poseur by selling out and playing blues music, but that's just not going to happen in my lifetime.
It's almost charity work, what people have done, turning other people on to my music.
Playing music to me is as close to having super powers as you can have.
The emotionally intelligent person is skilled in four areas: identifying emotions, using emotions, understanding emotions, and regulating emotions.
Numb is the new deep.
Disappointment has a name, it's heartbreak
Everybody enjoys arguing about the current state of music because it feels as if you are talking about something incredibly important, yet it requires little understanding of the subject matter at hand. It's like world politics meets the pink questions in Trivial Pursuit. Points are made but nothing gets accomplished.
Half of my heart’s got a grip on the situation, half of my heart takes time.
I need to learn how to start saying no. Like when someone says ‘please stop choking me.’
If you never stop when you wave goodbye you just might find, if you give it time, you will wave hello again.
Tore up my heart and shut it down. Nothing to do, nowhere to be. A simple little kind of free. Nothing to do, no one but me, and that's all I need. I'm perfectly lonely.
There's a constantly applicable nature to soul music, whereas sometimes pop music can be a periodical.
I look away at car crashes, and I know people who look away at car crashes, because it makes us uncomfortable to watch other people in pain.
I wanna run through the halls of my high school, I wanna scream at the top of my lungs. I just found out there's no such thing as the real world, just a lie you've got to rise above.
We just feel like we don't have the means, To rise above and beat it. So we keep waiting, Waiting on the world to change...
I'll never let your head hit the bed without my hand behind it.
I am tempted to keep the car in drive, And leave it all behind...
How dare you say it's nothing to me? Baby, you're the only light I ever saw.
It's very liberating when you finally realize it's impossible to make everyone like you.
You should have a picture of yourself as a kid in your home so that you remember where you came from.
I've always said I've got the coolest fans, and I brag about you like grandchildren when I talk to other artists.
I've never done anything because I thought it would look cool.
I have male fans, but I'm persuading them to become female!
Atlanta's my musical home. It really was the place where I really came alive.
I mean, I’m quite happy. I’m happy in all aspects of my life. I'm very happy in all aspects of my life.
No matter what I do, I'm going to earn it.
The minute hand moves faster than you think it does.
Not worrying is a skill. It's a skill not breaking down every single moment.
What I enjoy about the live experience is getting onstage, being handed a guitar that is in tune, taking it off mute, knowing that the very moment I want to play a note, I can play it. People are waiting on me and I'm waiting on me, and I have no idea what I'm going to play. That's the biggest joy in life.
Stop falling in love with everything that lets you down, even if your hands are shaking and your faith is broken, even as the eyes are closing, do it with a heart wide open. Say what you need to say.
I've learned to appreciate everything that has been given to me.
I believe in blues, and I believe that it's been misrepresented.
I'm someone who would like to act like I don't care, but I care.
I remember playing the guitar through the amplifier facing out the window of my house onto the street in the summer time - that was social media in 1992.
Yeah, Under The Table And Dreaming shaped the way that I think about writing songs.
When you do an interview with me, you're talking to a cheap imitation of the person that I really am. There's no magic in my words, it's just me talking.
I was smart enough to know it would probably make me a salable item for the paparazzi. I knew I'd have to move to a home that had a gate. But that pearl of possibility that lives in your heart when you meet somebody you want to know more about has such a different molecular density than everything else that you have to pursue it.
I'm pretty good at taking accountability now, and I never did anything to deserve that. It was a really lousy thing for her to do.
Look, demanding somebody do anything in this day and age is not going to fly.
My hits are not hits.
Never, ever underestimate the power of 'Id Like that.
You know I used to be the back porch poet with my book of lines, always hoping knowing all the time, I'm probably never gonna find the perfect rhyme. . .For heavier things
Hopefully people can see my music is tethered to my brain.
Sometimes I get scared that I’m going to enter a web address into Twitter thinking it was my browser. That would be bad.
I wanted to be a blues guitar player. And a singer. And a songwriter. Not a shock jock.
― John Mayer Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
