Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Darnielle
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: March 16
Composer
Musician
Singer-Songwriter
Bloomington
Indiana
Listen
Music
Trying
Kind
Like
People

More quotes by John Darnielle

Image
You always feel like your 18-year-old self in some sense. And that's what walking through New York on a June evening feels like - you feel like it's Friday and you're 17 years old.
John Darnielle
Image
While writing is a mystical process, it's also work. If you show up to work five days in a row, nobody's going to pat you on the back - everyone does that. Well, do that with your writing. Just show up. Be there for it. When you get an idea, write it down somewhere and then be a steward of that idea.
John Darnielle
Image
My work is more important than I am. I'm just some guy.
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
I was 14 or 15 when I discovered poetry, and I pretty much stopped writing prose until Master of Reality.
John Darnielle
Image
Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive.
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
It's hard always to say what it is one likes about a place, for me. I feel it.
John Darnielle
Image
I consider myself a lyricist first and foremost, but if you get something else out of what I do, that's fine too. I'm not sitting back here telling people how they have to take my stuff. We just want to play music, and hope that people like it.
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
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.
John Darnielle
Image
I don't celebrate milestones and I don't do anniversary editions. It's not my style to reflect on accomplishments.
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 get nostalgic about having lived in Ames, Iowa, even though being a vegetarian in Iowa is not fun.
John Darnielle
Image
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
Image
Everybody experiences reality in a way that's only true for them.
John Darnielle
Image
Back in the 90s, if you did mail order in music, you could make a good living doing it if you could hustle.
John Darnielle
Image
May we all emerge from winter with our strength renewed and any unwanted pieces left under the ice.
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
Not everybody relates to pain, but if you can watch other people playacting it, you can absorb some of that vibe. It's like watching horror movies - you want to have the experience, but in a safe environment.
John Darnielle