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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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John Darnielle
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: March 16
Composer
Musician
Singer-Songwriter
Bloomington
Indiana
Think
Brain
Thinking
Actually
People
Funny
Bigs
Comes
Ideas
Thing
Honored
Work
John

More quotes by 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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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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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
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I'm kind of a hermit. Left to my own devices, I won't submerge myself in anything further afield than the driveway.
John Darnielle
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There is something fierce and starved about first ideas.
John Darnielle
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Life is hard, you're tired, and there's disease. The strategy that works for children is to be delighted by the things that delight you.
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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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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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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The reality of having a kid involves day-to-day practicality - not broader philosophical outlooks.
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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My son, who sees me almost every day of his life, will look at me and go, I know that dude! I like that dude! It's incredibly affirming.
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 seem to get the best work when I'm angry and depressed and alienated.
John Darnielle
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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.
John Darnielle
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Everybody experiences reality in a way that's only true for them.
John Darnielle
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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
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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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I usually kind of can't wait until my records leak. Back in the day, you could give people tapes, but you can't do that anymore, because it would be available to everyone on the planet within an hour.
John Darnielle
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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