Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Don't sit and wait - For the world on a plate - (It's not a stroke of luck or chance) - Just draw a bead on that sucker, and drive!
The reason I dislike talking about the creative process is that I do have a creative process that is a winner and it's a sure thing.
Once you decide that it is the art that is important and not how popular and well received you are, you no longer have an albatross.
People's association with improvisation means one person playing an endless stream of notes over something, and it doesn't have to be.
That's why I called my record Devil Without a Cause - I'm a white boy who's so sick of hearing that white kids are going to steal rap.
When I listen to something, I like to be taken out of my seat and thrown across the room. If it sounds good and feels good, that's it.
Playing live is my natural element. It's too hard to relax in the studio because there are too many options. It's just not as exciting.
I don't find inspiration by just sitting down with a guitar anymore. I lost that. I started being so interested in other kinds of music.
Our prisons are very bad. When I was in Ikoyi prison, people were dying every day. They were carrying bodies out of the prison every day.
I truly believe that people like myself, who are in a position of entertainers in the limelight, should keep their mouth shut on politics.
I have nightmares that I'm going to wake up, and everyone's driving a Prius and living in a condo, and we're all getting health insurance.
I detest talking about myself. There is a reason why people pick up an instrument and put it between themselves and the rest of the world.
American record companies seem to feel I am antiwestern, anticapitalism, anti the kind of society they like. They think I'm a troublemaker.
I've always made music from the heart, and that's what I do. And at the end of the day, whether it works or not, I can say I tried my best.
When I started out I thought I might make a little money, get some girls, get a taste of the rock 'n' roll life. It's gone way beyond that.
I much prefer the road. My thing is getting live in front of people. There is a sterile environment to a studio that doesnt make me let go.
Once I go on stage, the atmosphere is totally theatrical. The greater the illusion, the greater the intensity of the excitement it creates.
Honestly, before I settled on a name for the Bon Iver project in general, Chigliak was in the running for what I was going to name the band.
I much prefer the road. My thing is getting live in front of people. There is a sterile environment to a studio that doesn't make me let go.
There are decent people that I know who don't know how to treat their partner. It's been built up so hard and so high that people are afraid.
I always say getting married was a ball. I had a blast getting married. Loved it so much I got married six or seven times or whatever it was.
Yeah; I'm a much better blues player than anybody knows, but being in the kind of group I'm in, we were always trying to make popular records
It's hard for me to say that what I'm doing isn't even really music, because deep inside of me, what I want to do is much greater than music.
The amount of people that I feel like... I'm not being self-demeaning, but I actually feel like I'm not as cool as them, you know what I mean?
You know how much money the oil companies have? If you need some gas, just go fill your tank off and drive off - they're not going to miss it.
The personal antics have overshadowed the music. I never wanted that but I knew what I was getting into when I got into everything I got into.
Yeah; I'm a much better blues player than anybody knows, but being in the kind of group I'm in, we were always trying to make popular records.
I didn't grow up with indie rock - I mean, I listened to bands that are considered indie rock, but I think that term is dead and uninteresting.
If it looks good, you'll see it. If it sounds good, you'll hear it. If its marketed right, you'll buy it. But... If its real... you'll feel it.
I'm not a greedy man; there really is nothing I couldn't live without. But if there was a fire, and I saved my child and my pets, I'd be happy.
One of the things that was crucial for me I got from Rory Gallagher, which was the idea of, like, being a guitar player for life and living it.
Before there were any sort of 'recordings' there was performance. If we are devolved back to the Stone Age tomorrow, there will be performance.
Apple is not thinking different anymore, they are getting worse by the day. They've become bottom-dollar and you can see that transition easily.
I'm not only a fan of Apple products, I have stock in the company. I think Steve Jobs has started one of the greatest corporations in the world.
We are all driven by an invisible whip. Some run, some have fun, some are hip, some tip, some dip, but we all must answer to the invisible whip.
And so it's inescapable and people who proclaim scrupulous honesty can only proclaim that if they don't examine closely the things they believe.
Most people outside of America won't get it. It's the Easter bunny. It's another lie and I don't understand why we had to invent this character.
The reality is, if you're friends with somebody you should be able to be honest with them, and that honesty should be the biggest magnet to truth.
I really have to be in a specific headspace to even begin to illuminate an idea that would create another Bon Iver record, and I'm just not there.
I always looked up to so many people before me and was lucky to become such good friends with them. I learned so much hanging out with those cats.
I didn't want to go out and change anything. I just wanted to make the music that was part of my background, which was rock and blues and hip-hop.
People write me letters and say I should answer them. But I don't like to answer letters. I don't write letters. I've never written my mother one.
When I was young we weren't even allowed to speak our own languages in school. They called it 'vernacular,' as if only English was the real tongue.
Well, I was into music since I was a kid, ya know, back in Detroit. I say Detroit, but it was really a little suburb outside the city called Romeo.
I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about anything at any given moment. When you feel like you've arrived somewhere, that's the real problem.
Language is an inadequate form of communication. If you've picked up an instrument, it's because you don't feel you are communicating sufficiently.
In a way, I created Utopia as a platform for me to become more of a guitar player and less of the kind of balladeer that people were taking me for.
It's the only way that YOUR life is gonna have any value to you. If you're just living the same life that everybody else is living what's the point?
To be spiritual is not by praying and going to church. Spiritualism is the understanding of the universe so that it can be a better place to live in.
Hopefully, most days, you're like, "This is sweet. I wake up and do the things that I do and I'm usually smiling." That's how my dad is with his job.