Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's easy to follow national politics and weigh in on social media, but if I'm tweeting stuff about Chatham County, no one cares.
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.
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.
You're not really going to know what a place is like 'til you've lived there a few years - you sort of just have to go with your gut.
You should avoid seeing too much of yourself anywhere: in the outside world, in others, in the imagined worlds that give you shelter.
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.
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.
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.
Giving up and doing something else (nursing, for me) was exactly what eventually led me to making music that other people wanted to hear.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My son, who sees me almost every day of his life, will look at me and go, "I know that dude! I like that dude!" It's incredibly affirming.
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.
Over the past 40 years, the tradition of Southern progressivism has been somewhat successfully erased by right-wing revisionist historians.
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.
A band's first album's usually not great. When you made the first album, you had a day job and you were still trying to be serious about it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The possibility of disaster remains horrific to me. Like when you know everything's about to go wrong in a way that's not controllable or knowable.
It's impossible to be content all the time - you have to learn to be content in places where you're unhappy and owning your emotions, whatever they are.
The fact that somebody's telling you a story about people who didn't exist doesn't make the experience of the story any less real in your heart and mind.
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.
People talk about songwriting or comedy as creative expression, but life is creative expression. Table-making, even nursing, is extraordinarily creative.
It's a cliché to state that one should think like a child, but it's clear that kids know something that the world tries to make you unlearn later in life.
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."
[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.
I really love Durham more than any place I've ever been; some small towns can be really provincial and strangling, but Durham is the best city in the world.
Life is entirely unthinkable without any of the creative arts, and they're all a continuum - the force in question is creativity, not its mode of expression.
I know the Bible pretty well. I'm not one of those guys who can immediately start quoting every book, but usually I know where to look to find certain themes.
I don't really have any position to complain about my job. Yeah, every job has its moments like, "Ah, you know, it's Wednesday." But I'm blessed. I love my work.
I start writing, pull whatever images happen to occur to me and make up a story, instead of starting with details that are real and I know of and going from there.
It makes me envious of anybody who can say truly that they don't care what anybody thinks of what they do, because I care a lot about the people who like my stuff.
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.
I think wrestling is the one that presents theater for people who want to see some theater but don't necessarily have to dress up or be quiet while they're watching.
I make up stories that take place in real space with real people. If I could convert this into a technique for experimental novels, I might really be onto something.
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.
People like to say how much they like stuff, but with 'The Sunset Tree,' people shared stories about what it meant for them. And that stuff's so humbling and amazing.
I think I read too much Arthur Conan Doyle when I was young and got this idea that a gentleman should know a lot about one thing and plenty about most everything else.
I think I read too much Arthur Conan Doyle when I was young, and got this idea that a gentleman should know a lot about one thing and plenty about most everything else.
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.
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 was a huge comic book fan. It's weird because the era of 'Marvel' I was into turns out to be very important in the long run, but it's not the one that anybody romanticizes.
I always assumed people wanted to hear me tell stories, but then I had 'The Sunset Tree.' It turned out, my own stories were the ones that registered with people the hardest.
People will complain that they don't want to wait around for lightning to strike, but why not? If you invest yourself in chance, the potential for disappointment is pretty low.
Metal isn't necessarily aggressive. There's metal that's contemplative, there's metal that's sad, and there's metal that's exuberant. No genre is limited in what it can express.
Music is a permanent art, it will always go through phases where you like it and are in tune with it, but saying that music "got bad" is infantile. The same is true with your life.