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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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John Darnielle
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: March 16
Composer
Musician
Singer-Songwriter
Bloomington
Indiana
Like
Didn
Albums
Hands
Asked
School
Clothes
Beatles
Wells
Hold
Wore
Well
Somebody
Suspect
Play
Hand
Suspects
Writing
High
Wanna
Time
White
Album

More quotes by 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.
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One way you can get really close to God is to sin as hard as you can.
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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.
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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.
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It's hard to stay positive when there's a lot of evil in the world.
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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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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
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There are real teachers out there I don't pretend to have their mantle.
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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It usually happens that I have multiple different projects going on at once, and one can be referencing the other.
John Darnielle
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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.
John Darnielle
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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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May we all emerge from winter with our strength renewed and any unwanted pieces left under the ice.
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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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.
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.
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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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
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Literature is a mystical place for me. It's not dry. It's where miracles happen.
John Darnielle
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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