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My work is more important than I am. I'm just some guy.

John Darnielle

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John Darnielle
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: March 16
Composer
Musician
Singer-Songwriter
Bloomington
Indiana
Guy
Important
Work

More quotes by John Darnielle

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It's an important moment as a reader, I think, when you can forget the question of whether you need to know what happened. Some people really want hard explanations. I'm the other way. I like mysteries. I don't want to frustrate people. I don't want people to feel like they got no answers, but I want to approach the mystery and sit with it.
John Darnielle
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Books are like rocks. You hold one in your hand and look at it in various lights to get a sense of it, and then when you get a good angle, you throw it through a window to see what happens.
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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I get nostalgic about having lived in Ames, Iowa, even though being a vegetarian in Iowa is not fun.
John Darnielle
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Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive.
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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I couldn't name more than a couple of good drum'n'bass acts, and I have no idea what's big in the dance world right now.
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
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The only people who are afraid of file sharing are the people whose albums are so dull presentation-wise that nobody cares about owning the actual finished product, and the people who have so little connection to their listeners that said listeners have no reason to care whether the artists they like are getting reimbursed for their efforts.
John Darnielle
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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.
John Darnielle
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In death metal, a lot of guys are Eddie Van Halen disciples, but they take his style to really expressionistic places. It's a real pleasure for me to hear people pushing their craft.
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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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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You should avoid seeing too much of yourself anywhere: in the outside world, in others, in the imagined worlds that give you shelter.
John Darnielle
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There is something fierce and starved about first ideas.
John Darnielle
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This is the funny thing about me. People think John just comes up with all the ideas. I'm honored. People think I have a big old brain, but actually I am the sum of the people I work with.
John Darnielle
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I'm so disconnected from an indie-rock community that I am the hermit people used to guess I was.
John Darnielle
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There are real teachers out there I don't pretend to have their mantle.
John Darnielle
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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.
John Darnielle
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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