Quote

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.

John Darnielle

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Darnielle
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: March 16
Composer
Musician
Singer-Songwriter
Bloomington
Indiana
Writing
Instead
Going
Happen
Make
Start
Story
Occur
Whatever
Pull
Happens
Images
Stories
Details
Real
Starting

More quotes by John Darnielle

Image
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.
John Darnielle
Image
Everybody experiences reality in a way that's only true for them.
John Darnielle
Image
It usually happens that I have multiple different projects going on at once, and one can be referencing the other.
John Darnielle
Image
It's good to be young, but let's not kid ourselves/ It's better to pass on through those years and come out the other side/ With our hearts still beating/ Having stared down demons/ Come back breathing.
John Darnielle
Image
My work is more important than I am. I'm just some guy.
John Darnielle
Image
Over the past 40 years, the tradition of Southern progressivism has been somewhat successfully erased by right-wing revisionist historians.
John Darnielle
Image
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.
John Darnielle
Image
I suspect by the time the Beatles were writing the White Album, they didn't go, 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand!' I wanna play that! It's like if somebody asked you to put on the clothes you wore in high school. Well, no. No!
John Darnielle
Image
I'm so disconnected from an indie-rock community that I am the hermit people used to guess I was.
John Darnielle
Image
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.
John Darnielle
Image
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.
John Darnielle
Image
You can get into anything if you are determined. I always thought that with music, too.
John Darnielle
Image
I was 14 or 15 when I discovered poetry, and I pretty much stopped writing prose until Master of Reality.
John Darnielle
Image
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.
John Darnielle
Image
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.
John Darnielle
Image
Kayfabe is kind of a code. To break kayfabe is to let people know that the punch was not real and that the match was scripted.
John Darnielle
Image
I think The Sunset Tree is really the album on which I really learned to trust other musicians, which is so important.
John Darnielle
Image
There are stylists I really love. I'm a huge Joan Didion fan - if I wrote something that she might like, then I'd feel very proud. I want the action to move as quickly as it does in A Book of Common Prayer, where one thing bonks right into another very quickly.
John Darnielle
Image
I'm not really a goal-oriented guy. I started doing the Mountain Goats just for the sheer hell of it.
John Darnielle
Image
I think it's a misconception that metal's about anger, obviously.
John Darnielle