Quotes by Michael Gira - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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I don't want to sound like everybody else.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Sound
Want
Copy Quote
Swans are majestic, beautiful looking creatures. With really ugly temperaments.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Beautiful
Swans
Ugly
Copy Quote
I'm a producer in the old-school way - not just some slacker working on Pro Tools.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Old School
School
Tools
Way
Copy Quote
The sexuality of children - there's a lot friction there. That tension interests me a lot.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Children
Friction
Sexuality
Copy Quote
Maybe in the future I'll put out someone's one-off project, but generally I don't have time.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Copy Quote
I'm pretty confident that people are going to come along for the ride. If they don't, tough.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Ifs
People
Tough
Copy Quote
I don't throw my body down on the stage at all anymore because I'm sure I'd snap like a twig.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Body
Stage
Twigs
Copy Quote
I like loud electric guitars because I like how you can just lose your entire being in the sound.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Guitar
Loud
Sound
Copy Quote
Playing an old record doesn't interest me at all. It's exactly the opposite of what I want to do.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Opposites
Records
Want
Copy Quote
It wouldn't interest me to try to sound like Cop or something. It would be silly and soul-crushing.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Crush
Silly
Soul
Copy Quote
I really wanted to get to the animal core of rock music and eliminate anything that wasn't necessary.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Animal
Rock Music
Rocks
Copy Quote
You find ways to push yourself into the sound through repetition. It doesn't stay the same. It morphs constantly.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Push Yourself
Sound
Way
Copy Quote
I used to routinely break my ribs doing stupid things onstage, but I have a healthy fear of breaking my bones now.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Healthy
Ribs
Stupid
Copy Quote
You make your work and you can't ask for approval when you're doing it. Otherwise, it's going to be untruthful in some way.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Approval
Asks
Way
Copy Quote
The music takes you. It has to be alive. It's like you hammer something, and the way it happens to bleed leads you into new directions.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Alive
Hammers
Way
Copy Quote
As far as playing playing festivals and everything, I feel like that's what I was born to do. I'm an entertainer, hopefully in the best sense.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Born
Feels
Festivals
Copy Quote
I have my own record company. I have to answer to God, basically. I'm not young, so I want to make the best possible work I can before I exit.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Answers
Records
Want
Copy Quote
Making those CDs, signing them, numbering them, packing them. It takes hundreds of hours, but it's worth it because I'm able to do the thing I love.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Able
Cds
Things I Love
Copy Quote
I never wrote poetry, just prose. I don't really consider songwriting a form of poetry either. The words are important, of course, but they're dependent on the music.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Form
Important
Songwriting
Copy Quote
The goal is ecstasy, but I don't want to make some sort of saccharine pop music. I want to make something that's completely uncompromising: the best possible music ever made.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Goal
Made
Want
Copy Quote
I'm the band leader. That's not to say that the other people are my minions - they all put in a tremendous amount of personality, and push the music in ways I would never expect.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Leader
People
Personality
Copy Quote
I'm always trying to push myself into unfamiliar places with the music, sometimes without success, I have to admit. But I'd rather be there than relying on a style that people recognize and want to follow.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Always Trying
People
Style
Copy Quote
Many of the songs were written as a way of paying tribute to specific people, but in the end the songs took on a life of their own and I didn't worry about accuracy or biographical truth, so it's not a problem.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
People
Song
Worry
Copy Quote
I went to art school and never thought I'd be a musician, but then punk rock came along in the late 70s and kind of ruined my life. So I quit art school to get involved in music and I've been doing it ever since.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Art
Rocks
School
Copy Quote
I wanted to challenge myself and move into something new. I felt that using the name Swans and the sonic attitude that that engenders was what I needed to move forward musically, and it's led to lots of new things.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Attitude
Moving Forward
Swans
Copy Quote
I'm just as comfortable performing solo with just my acoustic guitar and vocal as I am with a band. The main thing for me is that the performance remain rooted in the words and voice, that there be no place to hide.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Band
Guitar
Voice
Copy Quote
I'm more interested in pulling out strands of joy from both myself and the audience. I'm not saying the music or songs are "light," just that when they're performed with the correct commitment it's a source of real pleasure, for me anyway.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Commitment
Real
Song
Copy Quote
At a certain age, children are total Id - they're anything but beautiful little flowers. That always interests me. The place where the ego and the superego start, and where guilt and socialization and morality takes place, the true root of it.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Beautiful
Children
Flower
Copy Quote
Nina Simone was an entertainer. Bob Dylan was an entertainer. Anyone that can occupy a piece of music and make the air catch on fire at that moment is a true entertainer. That's how I view it. That's what I was meant to do. I love doing it. That's why I'm on earth.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Air
Fire
Views
Copy Quote
When I walk around New York now, there are so many ghosts. I find it very uncomfortable. There were many hard years, and I never really achieved any kind of comfortable financial success, so I just associate it with struggle. When I had a chance to get out, I was elated.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
New York
Struggle
Years
Copy Quote
When I first started doing the quieter, more acoustic material in Swans, there was a lot of derision and outright hatred from the audience and press, just as in the early days of Swans when we were rejected outright because of the bludgeoning, single-minded violence of the music.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Hatred
Swans
Violence
Copy Quote
I could never release something on the label I didn't personally love. The label's really an extension of my own musical career, and I'm intensely involved with every aspect personally, so it'd be a betrayal to myself if I released something simply because I thought it would make money.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Betrayal
Careers
Musical
Copy Quote
When I drink a Glass of water, it's thick and crawling with life. My mouth leads to the interior of my body - a caldron of disease, germs, and perversions of biology. I don't exist individually. I'm made of millions of living creatures, eating each other, decomposing, eating each other.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Glasses
Mouths
Water
Copy Quote
I got involved, for the most part, in the actual song construction, lyrics even. I didn't want to write the lyrics, but if there was a howler in there, I definitely pointed it out. Just trying to bring it up to a higher level. Of course, after a couple records, people get fed up with that. That's fine.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Couple
Song
Writing
Copy Quote
It's good that people come to the shows because there's nothing fashionable about Swans. Never has been, really. We've never been part of a scene. So the people that come are really there for the music. Fortunately, there's a lot of young people and a burgeoning female contingent, which is good as well.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Female
People
Scene
Copy Quote
I am definitely less and less interested in music made by people that exist today, people that are living. I just see them as part of the whole stupid process of the music business, desperate (even if they feign indifference) to get noticed, trying to "make it" in the stinking music business, to become "famous" etc, and it disgusts me.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
People
Stupid
Trying
Copy Quote
I never could read Foucault. I find philosophy tedious. All of my knowledge comes from reading novels and some history. I read Being and Nothingness and realized that I remembered absolutely nothing when I finished it. I used to go to the library every day and read every day for eight hours. I’d dropped out of high school and had to teach myself. I read Sartre without any background. I just forced myself and I learned nothing.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Philosophy
Reading
School
Copy Quote
I like loud electric guitars because I like how you can just lose your entire being in the sound. But I can't find myself in a situation where our band Swans is doing typical chord progressions - it just seems cliché to me. Even changing chords sounds like a cliché sometimes, though it happens occasionally in our music. But you find ways to push yourself into the sound through repetition. It doesn't stay the same. It morphs constantly.
Michael Gira / Singer-Songwriter
Progression
Push Yourself
Sometimes
Copy Quote

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