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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
Things
Exhaustive
Dilettantes
Lots
Worry
Knowledge
Much
Something
Always
Dilettante

More quotes by John Darnielle

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People talk about songwriting or comedy as creative expression, but life is creative expression. Table-making, even nursing, is extraordinarily creative.
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.
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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.
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I don't really have any position to complain about my job. Yeah, every job has its moments like, Ah, you know, it's Wednesday. But I'm blessed. I love my work.
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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.
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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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The moment where you know the thing you want is ridiculous and pompous and a terrible thing to want anyway. The direction in which you're headed is not the direction you want to go, yet you're going to head that way a while longer cause that's just the kind of person you are.
John Darnielle
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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.
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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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I'll keep making records until I don't have more ideas for records.
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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Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive.
John Darnielle
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Every place on earth has a frequency. It's not good or bad, it's just the way it is, and if you can attune yourself to that frequency, then you can find comfort in that.
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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Conservative forces in the South have a lot of power - almost dynastic - dating back many years.
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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Everybody is in various states of needing to transcend something. I believe in mental health care, but when we call people crazy, we exclude them from our circle.
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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You can get into anything if you are determined. I always thought that with music, too.
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