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I seem to get the best work when I'm angry and depressed and alienated.

John Darnielle

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John Darnielle
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: March 16
Composer
Musician
Singer-Songwriter
Bloomington
Indiana
Depressed
Angry
Seem
Seems
Best
Work
Alienated

More quotes by 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!
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There are real teachers out there I don't pretend to have their mantle.
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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.
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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.
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Back in the 90s, if you did mail order in music, you could make a good living doing it if you could hustle.
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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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I think The Sunset Tree is really the album on which I really learned to trust other musicians, which is so important.
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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The more I learn about stuff the more conscious I become of grave gaps in my knowledge.
John Darnielle
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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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There's this idea that there was a point in our childhood when we were in some way better than we are now and we should try to hang on to that.
John Darnielle
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People say friends don't destroy one another. What do they know about friends?
John Darnielle
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My work is more important than I am. I'm just some guy.
John Darnielle
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When all my friends insisted that they were feeling jaded, it struck me as an affected pose. To me, everything is always new.
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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You can get into anything if you are determined. I always thought that with music, too.
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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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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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'll keep making records until I don't have more ideas for records.
John Darnielle