Best 30 quotes of Ted Leo on MyQuotes

As I've grown older I've been more influenced by more meandering styles of guitar playing, whether it's Celtic or Ethiopian folk music or some kind of noisier jazz like Sonny Sharrock. In terms of songwriting, I don't know that I could even pin it down.

Bands-- enough with the crayon face-paint-- you're better than that.

I actually enjoy Instagram. I enjoy seeing what people who I have some connection to are doing around the globe.

I actually dream a lot of songs, and I try to be good about voice-memoing ideas.

I actually enjoy Instagram. I enjoy seeing what people who I have some connection to are doing around the globe. I'm even old-school Instagram. I'm here for your "What did you have to eat today?" I'm fine with that.

I am always thinking music.

I am the stereo-typical classic lapsed Catholic. Religious themes crop up in my songs sometimes as metaphors and other kinds of touchstones for getting at issues and "deeper issues," and all that. Right now, honestly, I think all religion is proving itself to be a NET negative on the human race. I recognize its valuable place in individual lives and many larger communities - I know the good that is done in its various names all over the world, but I don't believe in it anymore, and I see the negative aspects dragging us down at a much faster rate than the positive ones are bouying us up.

If so much of your experience is devoted to the thought of documentation, you're already sort of spinning out this narrative from this moment that you are attempting to control instead of just experiencing it.

If you live up against train tracks, it can make your life a living hell.

I gotta make a living somehow, and make ends meet. I accept the idea of having a retirement.

I know that the dream mind is irrational, but I like to think that if I hear something in a dream that's really good, then it's irrational... but it's not crazy.

I love touring. But it's super nice to have a new reason to play shows that isn't based around that perennial cycle of album/tour/promotion.

I'm even old-school Instagram. I'm here for your "What did you have to eat today?" I'm fine with that.

I think I'd like to see CDs disappear. Too much plastic crap lying around. If I want some music these days, I'm gonna either get as MP3s or on vinyl.

I think it's become such a part of younger people's daily life to have the instant access to each other that it sometimes gets a little presumptuous. People feel like it's OK, for example, to email you with some weird personal criticism they have.

It's almost weirder sometimes when you don't have a full life experience with someone's ups and downs, knowing what they've been through. Sometimes a loss that just comes out of left field rings in a very weird way when you have actually sort of relied on this small moment with this or that person, as a moment that actually has defined something for you in your life.

I used to think success would be sustainability. Not being behind the eight ball.

Most of the time I wind up with a sleepily mumbled melodic line, sometimes with words, sometimes not. But then with my waking brain I have to decide whether it's worth...I mean, sometimes it's not worth it.

My "degree" has done nothing for me at all. But that I've learned - the critical thought processes I've tried to keep sharp - these things were furthered along by college. I hated so much of my life "at university," but I also loved so much of it, and the things that I loved about it have kept me in a sort of "scholarly pursuit" to this day. Maybe it messed me up because I believe that there are things like truth and beauty, and that art and discussion can help us find them and enhance our lives.

Someone once said that "The Waste Land" was a scum of poetry floating on a sea of footnotes. That resonated with me, because that's kind of what I was doing lyrically for a while. I was being very referential in a way. I would drop in these little phrases or ideas that were sort of portholes into a whole bigger realm of thought or whatever, that would work within the song, but that you could also poke through into a bigger discussion.

Sometimes a loss that just comes out of left field rings in a very weird way when you have actually sort of relied on this small moment with this or that person, as a moment that actually has defined something for you in your life.

The early 2000s for me were a very emotional time, politically. I'd been through Reagan and been through first Bush and Clinton, and it's not like I had an easy time through those years. But I just thought it was particularly rough. I have to say the World Trade Center attack was very weird for me. The events that followed were worse. It was a really long swath of time.

The obsessive documentation is itself adjacent to hyper-consumption in our society. The desire to just have everything all the time and adjacent to that is - it might be a little hokey but - a certain loss of identity that then only gets sort of found or ascribed to these moments that are documented. If so much of your experience is devoted to the thought of documentation, you're already sort of spinning out this narrative from this moment that you are attempting to control instead of just experiencing it.

The obsessive documentation is itself adjacent to hyper-consumption in our society. The desire to just have everything all the time and adjacent to that is - it might be a little hokey but - a certain loss of identity that then only gets sort of found or ascribed to these moments that are documented.

There are more people that are WORTH playing for and making records for than the fickle and casual - they just don't blog about what they hate as much. I feel like every show that we play live reminds me of why I play music. When you're away from that personal connection, you can get wound up in all the hoo-ha about this and that, but when you get out there and connect with people, you can't help but be moved, and that keeps you going at least until the next show!

Though I know for a fact that some of my fans would be happy for me to do anything that's going to help me be successful, namely to go to a major label, and I thank them for that, there'd be a lot of people who I think wouldn't be so happy with that change, and when I DO get dropped, then where would I be?

When I get into the moment of actually feeling like I want to write, to finish something, I do what I've always read authors do, and park myself at a desk and bang things out for three hours. And if I have to throw it all away, I throw it all away.

When I started playing solo 10 years ago, I had some ham-fisted idea about trying to subvert the "singer-songwriter" tag/genre, and I tried to obscure my identity into the identity of a collective or band or whatever. That's part of the reason that I used to play with backing tapes and why so much of my early stuff was so awash in tape hiss and echo noise.

When you're traveling on a body of songs that you have played for many, many years, for most nights of your life - I'm sure you've experienced this yourself - it's not that every night is not it's own thing. It is.

You play the one song that people want to hear the most every night, and for every audience that's a special thing. And usually that translates back to you.