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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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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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Conservative forces in the South have a lot of power - almost dynastic - dating back many years.
John Darnielle
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Young people like to feel self-righteous, like they're on the right side of things.
John Darnielle
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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.
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 suspect by the time the Beatles were writing the White Album, they didn't go, 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand!' I wanna play that! It's like if somebody asked you to put on the clothes you wore in high school. Well, no. No!
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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Over the past 40 years, the tradition of Southern progressivism has been somewhat successfully erased by right-wing revisionist historians.
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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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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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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You learn to present dark things without including their ability to harm, treasuring them for what they are.
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!
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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I'm so disconnected from an indie-rock community that I am the hermit people used to guess I was.
John Darnielle
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I'm sort of a cavedweller: I miss my house, my yard, my kitchen, my wife. The trees. When I get home, I like to get down into my office neighborhood as soon as I can.
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 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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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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I don't celebrate milestones and I don't do anniversary editions. It's not my style to reflect on accomplishments.
John Darnielle