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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

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

More quotes by John Darnielle

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It's hard to stay positive when there's a lot of evil in the world.
John Darnielle
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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
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Conservative forces in the South have a lot of power - almost dynastic - dating back many years.
John Darnielle
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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.
John Darnielle
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The South actually has a very strong tradition of activism. The civil rights movement came from down here! It was black activists demanding that their voices be heard. People say these are red states. No they're not!
John Darnielle
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This is why people cry at the movies: because everybody’s doomed. No one in a movie can help themselves in any way. Their fate has already staked its claim on them from the moment they appear onscreen.
John Darnielle
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May we all emerge from winter with our strength renewed and any unwanted pieces left under the ice.
John Darnielle
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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.
John Darnielle
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Adulthood is interesting to adults. But I would never want to write about stuff I dont feel everybody can connect to.
John Darnielle
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I'm not really a goal-oriented guy. I started doing the Mountain Goats just for the sheer hell of it.
John Darnielle
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I enjoy hearing people who are good at their instruments and who've found a distinctive voice.
John Darnielle
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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
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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
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Anything that is within you is a gift. To be able to take possession of that and say, Whatever it is, I am bigger than it, is to learn to cherish even the hard and painful things.
John Darnielle
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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.
John Darnielle
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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.
John Darnielle
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Gender relations are a sad story of men talking trash about women all over the world.
John Darnielle
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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.
John Darnielle
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When I was a kid, I was a big science fiction fan, but current horror books were harder to get your hands on.
John Darnielle
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You learn to present dark things without including their ability to harm, treasuring them for what they are.
John Darnielle