Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I like rural areas.
It's O.K. to accept good fortune.
Cities are made for enemies to destroy.
It is more rewarding to be complicit with scarcity than excess.
People are looking for fame or a focus, and I can't provide that.
When I was a kid, I always thought that acting was going to be the way to go.
I think everybody works from a defensive position, for the most part, in the film industry.
It's nice to be able to backtrack and not be embarrassed by the music you used to listen to.
I figure it's okay to make certain rules, whether or not people despise you for it at the time.
It's definitely important to be open enough to seize an opportunity when the opportunity is there.
I don't like the idea of being surrounded by hidden things; people you can't see in buildings and cars.
Sometimes we need to tell ourselves that we're not going to do certain things, just in order to stay sane.
I don't think that word - the word pirate - has any real meaning. Or it's something that's had meaning imposed on it.
Too much emphasis is put on American roots music when people try and place me. You know, I grew up listening to punk.
I make the songs and part of making them is singing them. But what you hear is not me. It's the song. It's through me.
Sometimes it will be for more money than I've ever been offered before. I mean, am I an idiot again for not doing that?
Frank Sinatra's never been handsome, but he's one of my favorite singers. Who needs looks when you have a voice and power?
You're making something that won't be what it is until some unknown date in the future. All aspects of the personal disappear.
I think most great actors have their own life trajectory, the character motion doesn't have anything to do with their life motion.
There's very little admirable about being a pirate. There's very little functional about a pirate. There's very little real about a pirate.
I feel much more physically connected to my voice, and I like the physicality of the voice, and how the voice can physically occupy a song.
I think that what trips up a lot of great musicians is that they become involved with too many things that aren't where their strengths lie.
What is normally called religion is what I would tend to call music - participating in music, listening to music, making records and singing.
As it turns out, as an adult I can have a very unpleasant, fierce and unforgiving temper at times. But I don't think I had that when I was a kid.
Whenever I see something that looks like it could be good - whether it's on vinyl, CD or cassette - if it's not too expensive, I'll take a chance.
I'd like my records to reach as many people as possible, but I'm also thinking in terms of how I can keep from getting jaded or unhappy with the process.
I don't usually read reviews. I usually read the interviews, just because I figure it's a good way to try to do them better if I ever have to do them again.
To me, recordings are little fourth-dimension artifacts, because they already are representatives of past, present, and future, just inherently in their existence.
I don't like going to cities. I don't mind maybe being in a city sometimes for a few hours, but I pretty much don't like cities. I don't even like passing through them.
Sometimes the ensemble 'Eighth Blackbird' will have performances and invite me to be a featured soloist. I think that is what they call it in that world-"featured soloist."
I think that America in general is piratical. Every time we accept a paycheck for doing almost nothing, allowing us to live above the poverty line, we're engaging in piracy.
I write a song to be recorded. And to some extent to be performed, but definitely more to be recorded than performed, because the recording will last longer than a performance.
One thing that the Internet has created is the sense that information is at your fingertips, when it's really only a very, very limited, specific, and slanted kind of information.
It's good when someone says, "Would you write a song for this purpose," or "would you record a song for this purpose," or "would you help me realize this song," again, for this purpose.
I need to go someplace faraway that doesn't have telephones and doesn't have a record player and doesn't have movie theaters and people walking down the street in order to not do anything.
I have a mantra that kind of explains my feelings on this subject, which is, "The past is the present is the future." When you're recording something, you're making something that will exist in the future.
I have more respect for somebody who points at his ideal - in this case, the ideal of the pirate - and then becomes something that's more radical, more exciting, more subversive than a pirate could ever be.
I am thrilled at most corners that I turn walking down the street, I'm thrilled by most pages I turn when I'm reading a book thinking of what it's going to show and what it's going to make possible for tomorrow.
I do not want a personal relationship with my fans. Or to do anything that encourages them to think they have one with me. They can have a personal relationship with my songs. That's fine, but they don't know me.
The ideal is to put on shows where, if you go into the same space again, you don't remember ever having been there before, because where you were was a space that only existed that one time, created by the music.
For a long time I've walked through this world with the desire, like in Rear Window, to look into other people's lives because I know that there is a way in which I am the same as so many of the strangers that I see.
Writing songs is a profession; so it's not an attempt to take things from my interactions with other people and for some reason give them to a total stranger to listen to. I find it offensive to hear other people do that.
On days where I feel the karma is in balance I'm not afraid of death. And when I feel it's weighing heavily on the negative side, then I get very scared and just think about eternal damnation and how unpleasant that would be.
You're hoping that it's going to be an extraordinary experience any time you create and/or listen to music with other people. I guess what I've been saying over the past few minutes is that it's hard to do that, to create that.
I think records and music are more appropriate and more respectful of the human soul than the churches are. And more respectful of the needs of humans to communicate with the aspects of themselves that are neglected by language.
My hope has always been that each record could have its own audience. Of course, it's awesome to have a cumulative audience for more than one record, but I like the idea that there could be a record that an individual might like.
My dream many years ago would've been to continue to write and record songs in record/album form for years to come, but now records aren't what they were then - and so it doesn't actually feel very good to make a record of songs.
With women, you always have to make an educated decision to figure out what they're thinking. It's not one that's necessarily sympathetic, always. Of course, we're all human beings, but the gender thing is big thing. And a great thing.
I gathered all the different Peel Sessions recordings together - I did six or seven of them over the years - and listened to all of them. These definitely have at least a superficial relationship to each other because they're all very spare.
I still make music. I still write music and I record music, I just don't trust music promotion [and] distribution right now enough to record a new set of diligently worked-upon compositions. I do trust the audience and the audiences very much.