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I always worry that I'm a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don't have exhaustive knowledge of much.

John Darnielle

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John Darnielle
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: March 16
Composer
Musician
Singer-Songwriter
Bloomington
Indiana
Much
Something
Always
Dilettante
Things
Exhaustive
Dilettantes
Lots
Worry
Knowledge

More quotes by John Darnielle

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It's hard always to say what it is one likes about a place, for me. I feel it.
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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.
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The process of touring is always so weird to me. Once you've made the album, that's over, you move along.
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I was 14 or 15 when I discovered poetry, and I pretty much stopped writing prose until Master of Reality.
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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.
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The reality of having a kid involves day-to-day practicality - not broader philosophical outlooks.
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 think it's a misconception that metal's about anger, obviously.
John Darnielle
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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
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For me, moving is always a big opportunity. Its just a enough of a shift in outlook that every time I move, it seems to open something up.
John Darnielle
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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
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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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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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I grew up around some people whose parents toured a lot: tough on the marriage, tough on the kids.
John Darnielle
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I don't celebrate milestones and I don't do anniversary editions. It's not my style to reflect on accomplishments.
John Darnielle
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One way you can get really close to God is to sin as hard as you can.
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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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
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It usually happens that I have multiple different projects going on at once, and one can be referencing the other.
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