Best 143 quotes of John Darnielle on MyQuotes

A bands first albums usually not great. When you made the first album, you had a day job and you were still trying to be serious about it.

Adulthood is interesting to adults. But I would never want to write about stuff I dont feel everybody can connect to.

Anger is preverbal, so, by the time you're using words to express an angry feeling, you're already imposing loads of structure on that primal experience.

Anything that is within you is a gift. To be able to take possession of that and say, "Whatever it is, I am bigger than it," is to learn to cherish even the hard and painful things.

As important as politics are to me, the life and the spirit of people's emotions are much more important. People live real lives where they love and grieve and feel pain and joy and that is a whole separate sphere. All that political stuff, I believe in it strongly, but not as strongly as I believe that at some point you or someone is going to need a song to sit with and comfort them in a hard time.

Back in the 90s, if you did mail order in music, you could make a good living doing it if you could hustle.

Books are like rocks. You hold one in your hand and look at it in various lights to get a sense of it, and then when you get a good angle, you throw it through a window to see what happens.

Conservative forces in the South have a lot of power - almost dynastic - dating back many years.

[Dennis] Etchison would write stories that were just punch lines at the end. You wouldn't realize something horrific was happening until the last paragraph.

Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive.

Everybody is in various states of needing to transcend something. I believe in mental health care, but when we call people "crazy," we exclude them from our circle.

Every place on earth has a frequency. It's not good or bad, it's just the way it is, and if you can attune yourself to that frequency, then you can find comfort in that.

For me, moving is always a big opportunity. Its just a enough of a shift in outlook that every time I move, it seems to open something up.

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.

Gender relations are a sad story of men talking trash about women all over the world.

Giving up and doing something else (nursing, for me) was exactly what eventually led me to making music that other people wanted to hear.

Good things never last, bad things never die.

Human beings are selfish by nature. Everything that happens to a child, you immediately grab your own child and say, "I will never let that happen to you.

I always want to try and see what the appeal is in anything. It's the healthiest and most honest approach.

I always worry that I'm a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don't have exhaustive knowledge of much.

I always worry that I'm a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don't have exhaustive knowledge of much. 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. 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.

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.

I consider myself a lyricist first and foremost, but if you get something else out of what I do, that's fine too. I'm not sitting back here telling people how they have to take my stuff. We just want to play music, and hope that people like it.

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.

I crave music that'll sort of hurtle me into space and release me up there.

I did a lot of music criticism. I don't think much of it was any good. I think I wanted to show off a lot when I was younger. Now I just want people to enjoy the story. If it were possible to publish anonymously, that would be awesome.

I do have a romantic interest in outlasting everybody else. There's a sort of sad machismo to singer-songwriters, I think.

I don't celebrate milestones and I don't do anniversary editions. It's not my style to reflect on accomplishments.

I don't understand being idle; I don't have an idle setting. I probably should develop one.

I don't write my own publicity materials, I just read 'em and give 'em the OK.

I enjoy hearing people who are good at their instruments and who've found a distinctive voice.

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.

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. We go to countries like Germany, where I can't imagine that all of my fans are engaging with the lyrics first and foremost. I think they're catching a vibe, a feeling. I consider myself a lyricist first and foremost, but if you get something else out of what I do, that's fine too. I'm not sitting back and telling people how they have to take my stuff. We just want to play music, and hope that people like it.

If you get into a fight and somebody punches you, you get two feelings. One: That really hurts. Two: That relief in the realness of, like, Wow, this is what it is. It's not an intellectual process.

If you're standing in the middle of a ring and you're playing the villain, and everyone is booing and throwing things at you, that's real.

I get nostalgic about having lived in Ames, Iowa, even though being a vegetarian in Iowa is not fun.

I grew up around some people whose parents toured a lot: tough on the marriage, tough on the kids.

I grew up in Southern California, so the whole concept of a local music history is still kinda novel to me.

I have a hunger for justice, but art is a place I've always enjoyed being able to be free - to live in worlds that you don't have to be thinking about that all the time. I don't see myself writing Upton Sinclair books. My books are to entertain, although to me, entertainment is to make you feel sadness or to get in touch with your own pain - or fear, or to remember somebody who has gone missing from your life. That's my calling.

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.

I just started writing stuff to kill time on summer evenings. This is why I'm always telling people who ask me what they need to do to succeed to give up, do something else.

I like a lot of hardcore, but it's just a genre about which I don't have much to say. It's kind of a thing where, unless you're active in the hardcore community, what could you have to say of value about it? It resists criticism because it's not just a style but an entrance into several different worlds of ideas- political, philosophical, societal. The music is really only part of the whole scene. In that sense, the music doesn't change much because it shouldn't: It needs to be there as a signal that you're entering into a certain discursive mode, maybe.

I'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people who listen to what I do. But they have this additional aspect of how they take the stuff that I do, and so it broadens the work and it creates this strange connection. It's really a way of strangers communicating through this third thing, which is a body of work. But really, I know it's a cliché to say I write for myself, but I write for myself.

I'm kind of a hermit. Left to my own devices, I won't submerge myself in anything further afield than the driveway.

I'm not really a goal-oriented guy. I started doing the Mountain Goats just for the sheer hell of it.

I'm so disconnected from an indie-rock community that I am the hermit people used to guess I was.

I'm sort of a cavedweller: I miss my house, my yard, my kitchen, my wife. The trees. When I get home, I like to get down into my office neighborhood as soon as I can.

In death metal, a lot of guys are Eddie Van Halen disciples, but they take his style to really expressionistic places. It's a real pleasure for me to hear people pushing their craft.

In the present political situation, it's an interesting phenomenon to look at: what is the appeal of an autocratic leader? Why do people want somebody who yells at them? For most of us, that's so hard to understand. Who wants that? I think there are a lot of people for whom that fulfills some kind of need.

In wrestling, people just throw each other around, possibly actually bleed, and are still friends in the locker room afterwards. But there's a real glee - a feeling goes up in the arena, especially on non-TV days. If it's just people in a room and somebody starts to bleed, that's very exciting.