"It was my 16th birthday - my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do - write songs and sing them to people"
About this Quote
That cleanliness is the subtext. Nicks isn’t claiming she became famous because she wanted it badly enough; she’s framing her career as a kind of inevitability. “The only thing I could ever really do” reads like self-knowledge, but it also functions as a defense against the chaos that follows artists, especially women in rock: the industry’s opportunism, the public’s appetite for your personal life, the pressure to justify your ambition. Fate is a sturdier story than hustle.
The parental detail lands, too. Rock mythology loves the lone genius; Nicks slips in a quieter truth: support systems build legends. A gift from “mom and dad” becomes the first infrastructure of a career. And the final clause - “sing them to people” - reveals the real target. Not perfection, not validation, but transmission. The intent isn’t to sound profound; it’s to explain how performance became her native language, the way she learned to exist in public without apologizing for taking up space.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Nicks, Stevie. (n.d.). It was my 16th birthday - my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do - write songs and sing them to people. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-was-my-16th-birthday-my-mom-and-dad-gave-me-128931/
Chicago Style
Nicks, Stevie. "It was my 16th birthday - my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do - write songs and sing them to people." FixQuotes. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-was-my-16th-birthday-my-mom-and-dad-gave-me-128931/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"It was my 16th birthday - my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do - write songs and sing them to people." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-was-my-16th-birthday-my-mom-and-dad-gave-me-128931/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.

