Quote

I just started writing stuff to kill time on summer evenings. This is why I'm always telling people who ask me what they need to do to succeed to give up, do something else.

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
Time
Else
Evening
People
Give
Telling
Need
Summer
Giving
Kill
Needs
Succeed
Writing
Started
Something
Asks
Always
Stuff
Evenings

More quotes by John Darnielle

Image
My work is more important than I am. I'm just some guy.
John Darnielle
Image
The more I learn about stuff the more conscious I become of grave gaps in my knowledge.
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
Giving up and doing something else (nursing, for me) was exactly what eventually led me to making music that other people wanted to hear.
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
I'll keep making records until I don't have more ideas for records.
John Darnielle
Image
People will complain that they don't want to wait around for lightning to strike, but why not? If you invest yourself in chance, the potential for disappointment is pretty low.
John Darnielle
Image
It makes me envious of anybody who can say truly that they don't care what anybody thinks of what they do, because I care a lot about the people who like my stuff.
John Darnielle
Image
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
Image
The possibility of disaster remains horrific to me. Like when you know everything's about to go wrong in a way that's not controllable or knowable.
John Darnielle
Image
It usually happens that I have multiple different projects going on at once, and one can be referencing the other.
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
Young people like to feel self-righteous, like they're on the right side of things.
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
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
Image
I was 14 or 15 when I discovered poetry, and I pretty much stopped writing prose until Master of Reality.
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
I enjoy hearing people who are good at their instruments and who've found a distinctive voice.
John Darnielle
Image
I think I read too much Arthur Conan Doyle when I was young, and got this idea that a gentleman should know a lot about one thing and plenty about most everything else.
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