John Darnielle Quotes
Collection of top 100 famous quotes about John Darnielle
John Darnielle Quotes & Sayings
Happy to read and share the best inspirational John Darnielle quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.
I don't even want to be rich I just want to be alone.
— John Darnielle
And then I played some music, old music, and it sounded awful, and I loved it, I loved it so much.
— John Darnielle
But people underestimate just how starved everybody is for some magic pathway back into childhood.
— John Darnielle
They were smoking cigarettes in the deliberate self-conscious way of smoking teenagers:
— John Darnielle
I grew up around some people whose parents toured a lot: tough on the marriage, tough on the kids.
— John Darnielle
It's hard to stay positive when there's a lot of evil in the world.
— John Darnielle
I'm not really a goal-oriented guy. I started doing the Mountain Goats just for the sheer hell of it.
— John Darnielle
You could hear, in the questions they asked and how they asked them, that there were right answers, things they wanted to hear.
— John Darnielle
I think listening to a lot of Lou Reed when I was a teenager is what encouraged me to just sing however felt good to me.
— John Darnielle
I just started going to shows. I don't know how submerged I am: I feel guilty that I don't get out more, but I really like being inside the house.
— John Darnielle
Everyone in my orbit would have a terrible day: the arbiter of days has decreed it.
— John Darnielle
Giving up and doing something else (nursing, for me) was exactly what eventually led me to making music that other people wanted to hear.
— John Darnielle
Good things never last, bad things never die.
— John Darnielle
I think it's a misconception that metal's about anger, obviously.
— John Darnielle
There are only two stories: either you go forward or you die.
— John Darnielle
I used to assume no one would care, but I do think now I've written songs that are useful to people having dark hours.
— John Darnielle
I grew up in Southern California, so the whole concept of a local music history is still kinda novel to me.
— John Darnielle
Take dance music: I like enough of it and its history to be able to say a word or two about this or that record, but I'm nobody's authority.
— John Darnielle
It's not my style to be thinking about what a record is while I'm making it: I just write songs.
— John Darnielle
May we all emerge from winter with our strength renewed and any unwanted pieces left under the ice.
— John Darnielle
I knew she wanted to ask what I was doing, but I had the advantage. Nobody liked to see me speak.
— John Darnielle
The reality of having a kid involves day-to-day practicality - not broader philosophical outlooks.
— John Darnielle
It isn't really much of a mystery, this occasional need I have to comfort my father. I did something terrible to his son once.
— John Darnielle
Who doesn't want to rise above the obstacles in his pathway? Who wouldn't want to go down in flames?
— John Darnielle
I used to break three or four strings a night, and the show would be over because I didn't know how to change the strings.
— John Darnielle
They don't know they have expectations, but I show them by counterexample what their expectations were.
— John Darnielle
It's in the nature of the landscape to change, and it's in the nature of people to help the process along...
— John Darnielle
I don't sit down and say I'm going to write a song about this or that. They are never mapped out.
— John Darnielle
Wrestling's a form of expression, and it expresses vastness.
— John Darnielle
As an artist, you always have to be growing. You don't just want to do what you already know people like.
— John Darnielle
Kayfabe is kind of a code. To break kayfabe is to let people know that the punch was not real and that the match was scripted.
— John Darnielle
There's this idea that there was a point in our childhood when we were in some way better than we are now and we should try to hang on to that.
— John Darnielle
To me, creative work is labor, like any other kind of labor. It's got value, and it takes your time, and it's useful to people, depending.
— John Darnielle
I don't like to say, "Oh, I don't like this kind of music." I like to listen to it and try to see what people who like it get out of it.
— John Darnielle
A book is a journey: It's a thing you agree to go on with somebody, and I think every reader's experience of a book is going to be different.
— John Darnielle
I enjoy hearing people who are good at their instruments and who've found a distinctive voice.
— John Darnielle
Their boots were black and shiny and your treasures gleamed like stars,Bones from deep down in the fertile crescent. — John Darnielle
I expected him to leave then, because it always seems to me like nothing ever happens, but something did happen: he began to back up.
— John Darnielle
The process of touring is always so weird to me. Once you've made the album, that's over, you move along.
— John Darnielle
The more I learn about stuff the more conscious I become of grave gaps in my knowledge.
— John Darnielle
I am at a place in my life where the more like a cave I can make my surroundings, the happier I am.
— John Darnielle
Everybody experiences reality in a way that's only true for them.
— John Darnielle
People want you to play the songs they know. I try not to reflect too much, and I don't really like to focus too much on myself.
— John Darnielle
I'll tell you later" is a contingent claim that can be rendered false by any of several moves.
— John Darnielle
If my songs are being listened to between any other songs, that is awesome, and I'm glad people are getting something out of them.
— John Darnielle
Diagnoses exist to help get people services they need - but there's no such thing as mental illness. We're all mentally ill.
— John Darnielle
I'll keep making records until I don't have more ideas for records.
— John Darnielle
I love Joan Didion, but I love her writing. I don't think meeting her could solve my problems or make me understand the world better.
— John Darnielle
I will go where I will goAnd I will jettison all dead weight
And I will use these words for kindling
And I will sleep by the garden gate. — John Darnielle
You can get really good reads on your dreams if you think of every character in them as actually being you.
— John Darnielle
Who knows the secrets of anybody's heart.
— John Darnielle
I still can't manage to keep a journal, and people have been telling me to since the fourth grade.
— John Darnielle
Sometimes I do 'So Desperate' solo in the middle of the set. I really love to sing that song.
— John Darnielle
To me, everything is always new. People involved in my personal life make fun of me a lot for not being jaded.
— John Darnielle
You can get into anything if you are determined. I always thought that with music, too.
— John Darnielle
I was little the first time I heard the term "ghost town"; I fell immediately in love.
— John Darnielle
When you punish a person for dreaming his dreamDon't expect him to thank or forgive you. — John Darnielle
I think 'The Sunset Tree' is really the album on which I really learned to trust other musicians, which is so important.
— John Darnielle
As an idea occurs to me, I'll either follow it or not, but I'm more instinctive than master-planner about stuff.
— John Darnielle
Life is hard, you're tired, and there's disease. The strategy that works for children is to be delighted by the things that delight you.
— John Darnielle
One of the great things about wrestling is how it interrogates this silly idea that you have one authentic self.
— John Darnielle
I had a funny feeling that day, all day: something about how much I liked my life and where I was with it.
— John Darnielle
I watched 'Fame,' and I just love the choreography. It just gives me a place to be in another zone.
— John Darnielle
Sometimes I feel very young, and other times I feel like the side of a ship that's got a bunch of layers of mussels and barnacles on it.
— John Darnielle
There is something fierce and starved about first ideas.
— John Darnielle
A Cat Stevens record isn't just Cat Stevens' ideas. It's Cat Stevens and all the musicians who play with Cat Stevens, right?
— John Darnielle
Your intelligence doesn't override your desire to destroy yourself.
— John Darnielle
Gender relations are a sad story of men talking trash about women all over the world.
— John Darnielle
To me, the only good reason to be touring is if you still have something good to share instead of just revisiting past glories.
— John Darnielle
I am a person of high energy. That, and I sit down and I write when I get an idea - I put other things aside.
— John Darnielle
It had a soundtrack. All screams.
— John Darnielle
Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive.
— John Darnielle
I want to make sure people know I don't think I have any magic powers. I just have a story that I share.
— John Darnielle
Adulthood is interesting to adults. But I would never want to write about stuff I don't feel everybody can connect to.
— John Darnielle
I've written a lot about southern California, but I don't use the same characters. Leave the people in the songs in the songs, is my philosophy.
— John Darnielle
I'm kind of a hermit. Left to my own devices, I won't submerge myself in anything further afield than the driveway.
— John Darnielle
When I'm writing a song, I'm just making stuff up as I go along.
— John Darnielle
I always want to try and see what the appeal is in anything. It's the healthiest and most honest approach.
— John Darnielle
The studio's a collaborative environment. I just try to let people bring their own ideas to the songs and see what happens.
— John Darnielle
I didn't have a whole lot of friends anyway, so I didn't feel abandoned so much as reminded.
— John Darnielle
When all my friends insisted that they were feeling jaded, it struck me as an affected pose. To me, everything is always new.
— John Darnielle
I don't celebrate milestones and I don't do anniversary editions. It's not my style to reflect on accomplishments.
— John Darnielle
From a very young age, I was the kind of kid you can just put anywhere and I'd still find stuff to be stoked about.
— John Darnielle
I couldn't name more than a couple of good drum'n'bass acts, and I have no idea what's big in the dance world right now.
— John Darnielle
For me, moving is always a big opportunity. It's just a enough of a shift in outlook that every time I move, it seems to open something up.
— John Darnielle
My songs tend to sprint toward some epiphany and then explode.
— John Darnielle
