Best 55 quotes of Ben Folds on MyQuotes

A lot of 18-year-olds are like old men. They think they've seen everything.

And all I really want to say is you're the reason I want to stay.

Because I write very simply, but inside the simplicity, there's a lot of subtlety. That's what I'm proud of.

Being capable of anything is a bullshit concept, unless it means you also admit that you're capable of cheating, lying and killing.

Billy Joel and Joe Jackson were both great, and they both play piano.

But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you that's the center of it, that is it. It's almost like there's something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if you're a songwriter that sings your material.

Even though I live in America more, I feel like when I go to Adelaide, that's when I get to go home.

Everybody knows it hurts to grow up...and we're still fighting it.

Everyone, when you're a teenager and you're growing up, you do feel like your life is dramatic enough to be on a TV screen, but we know that it's not.

Everything I write is personal, really. Even when I'm sarcastic, it's quite personal. And on this record, from the production to the singing to the performances, I got it really honest. To the modern ear, it seems soft. When you hear it against other things, it seems vulnerable. Lyrically and musically, though, this is more subtle. And, yes, it's asking a lot of someone who's used to being hit over the head with bright neon to listen to this.

I could probably live in Bali the rest of my life and completely live in the sticks and have a f - king moped and make a record every couple of years and not step in public and break even like I do anyway. That's really tempting.

I divorce myself from listeners who aren't tolerant of humor. I did notice universally that, especially when it comes to weight, people look in the mirror and get the angle just right, tell themselves it's all right, and then they go out.

I do have that mindset - that most good art comes from some turmoil, from someone trying to come to some equilibrium, or come up and get a breath.

I don't leave my neighborhood. I don't go anywhere. There are four blocks I live in and there are two coffee shops, one at each end of the block... so I don't do much driving... Some people would say they never see me because I don't go anywhere. I stay in the blue state of Nashville, in my bubble.

I drink a lot, probably too much. My scene while writing lyrics is always a bottle of scotch and stacks of note cards, pencil and pencil sharpener. I throw around note cards and drink.

I feel like a quote out of context.

I feel like a quote out of context, withholding the rest so I can be for you what you want to see.

If I'm in a relationship and my girlfriend is sleeping with other people, I don't need to know who it is; I just want to know how she feels about it.

If the melody is telling me this is what the song is about, then I'm sort of forced into confession, autobiography or fantasy. If I don't do that, I've hamstrung the melody.

If you're afraid they might discover your redneck past, there are a hundred ways to cover your redneck past.

I have manic energy. What can be done about it? I don't know what to say sometimes. I'm professional in public, but I like to stay inside and be a hermit.

I look to an out gay man or woman as pretty much what I would aspire to. The strength that it takes to do that and the floodgates that open and what they pay for it.

I'm aware that I'm very fringe, and it's nice that way.

I'm definitely an anomaly, but I'm making things. They're selling, say, martinis, and I'm kind of making vintage Riesling. People aren't going to sit there very often, not your average public, and your average music-business monster is not going to take the time to notice the overtones and the undertones inside the flavor. They'd rather just have the martini.

I'm not really a strange person or anything, so if there's music I like, usually there's other people who like it too.

I'm older than I was, and I'm still washed-up, and I haven't changed my music one iota. It's just much easier to do this when people are being nice to you.

Im really good at writing almost hits.

I'm romantically inclined. No human being on Earth is not attracted to other people. There is no fairy tale that they only have eyes for you. You just choose to act on it or not.

In many ways, I've chosen to be plain, almost too plain, too self-effacing. Like, if I record a vocal and I don't like the way it sounds, I would have them turn it up and take the reverb off it to make it as plain as possible.

I start songs all the time. If I weren't so lazy, I would finish them. It's like when I have a deadline I have to. I always feel very lucky that I am forced to make records at certain times. If I was forced to make 2 records a year, I would write twice as many songs. I can't make myself finish something unless I am forced

I think alcohol is a good drug for me when I'm writing. I don't think I've ever had a problem with it. I can stop for a few weeks, so I think it's okay. I don't think it's good for my liver, but I do love it. It's a huge part of my life, and it makes me happy.

I think a lot of good directors listen to music while they're working. The songs just don't become a part of the film. They're replaced.

It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.

It's like being in the position of - in half of the industry's mind, you're kind of a cult-following, independent rocker. And on the other hand, you're a sellout. But neither one of them are right.

I used to do this big rant at the end of some gigs with Ben Folds Five. The band broke into this big heavy metal thing and I started as a joke to scream in a heavy metal falsetto. I found myself saying things like: Feel my pain, I am white, feel my pain.

I've gotten to the point where I realize that I need to tell my truth in music and not walk around blabbing my mind.

I want people to listen to my lyrics and be okay with themselves. The people who have it the roughest are homosexuals who come out of the closet.

My job is to be some sort of music/lyric psychic, to figure out that that's the right song to not fight the lyric.

Next door, there's an old man who lived to his nineties and one day passed away in his sleep. And his wife, she stayed for a couple of days and passed away. I'm sorry, I know that's a strange way to tell you that I know we belong.

Notes don't make music until you learn to insert silence between them.

Now that I have found someone, I'm feeling more alone... than I ever have before.

The clock never stops, never stops, never waits. We're growing old. It's getting late.

The less I talk in bars, write emails, express myself in an emotionally lewd way outside of my songwriting, the more I have to do it through my music.

The music business is a weird business. Sometimes licensing doesn't happen because some business component that you never knew about stops it.

The nature of honesty is that if someone has information or knows something about you that you don't want heard, then they have power over you.

The nice thing about age is worrying less and less about what people think.

The piano is just a different animal. It's expensive, it's big, it's heavy, and it doesn't fit in the mix easily. Everyone grew up with a piano in their living room, so rocking out on the piano was accessible - it wasn't an upper-class thing. Now pianos have become very much a piece of furniture.

The press is like any business. Its a group of really intelligent individuals that ends up being one slathering, one-eyed, drooling monster.

The reason I stop playing songs is usually because I get sick of them, and then they find themselves back into the set list at some point.

There is still some art in pop music. But it can't happen if you're not inspired.