John Darnielle Quotes
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Anger is preverbal, so, by the time you're using words to express an angry feeling, you're already imposing loads of structure on that primal experience.
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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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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.
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I'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people who listen to what I do. But they have this additional aspect of how they take the stuff that I do, and so it broadens the work and it creates this strange connection. It's really a way of strangers communicating through this third thing, which is a body of work. But really, I know it's a cliché to say I write for myself, but I write for myself.
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The only people who are afraid of file sharing are the people whose albums are so dull presentation-wise that nobody cares about owning the actual finished product, and the people who have so little connection to their listeners that said listeners have no reason to care whether the artists they like are getting reimbursed for their efforts.
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I'm not really a goal-oriented guy. I started doing the Mountain Goats just for the sheer hell of it.
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You can get into anything if you are determined. I always thought that with music, too.
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When I became conscious of being a person, when I was very small, I knew that I was from Indiana, but I had never seen Indiana. I was born there, but we moved when I was, like, a year old. I always had a sense of a place that was far away from where I was. I would research it and find out about it and I remember on Christmas morning I used to always call Indiana to find out what the weather was like; to see if it was snowing or not.
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Adulthood is interesting to adults. But I would never want to write about stuff I dont feel everybody can connect to.
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I like a lot of hardcore, but it's just a genre about which I don't have much to say. It's kind of a thing where, unless you're active in the hardcore community, what could you have to say of value about it? It resists criticism because it's not just a style but an entrance into several different worlds of ideas- political, philosophical, societal. The music is really only part of the whole scene. In that sense, the music doesn't change much because it shouldn't: It needs to be there as a signal that you're entering into a certain discursive mode, maybe.
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I don't really have any position to complain about my job. Yeah, every job has its moments like, "Ah, you know, it's Wednesday." But I'm blessed. I love my work.
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The reality of having a kid involves day-to-day practicality - not broader philosophical outlooks.
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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.
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There are so many ways to respond to music besides feeling like someone's communicating with you. It gives me a charge.
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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.
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People always talk about good time rock and roll, Chuck Berry or whatever, like this liberating force for feeling good. But what I need in my life is to be liberated into feeling bad. Not sad. I have plenty of sad. What I need is a place where I can spray anger in sparks like a gnarled piece of electrical cable. Just be mad at stuff and soak in the helplessness.
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Labor for a lot of people has a negative connotation. But not for me. I always want to be working.
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A bands first albums usually not great. When you made the first album, you had a day job and you were still trying to be serious about it.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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I am a person of high energy. That, and I sit down and I write when I get an idea - I put other things aside.
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Literature is a mystical place for me. It's not dry. It's where miracles happen.
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Our [former] governor [Pat McCrory] was supposed to be a moderate, but he found himself beholden to people who have much more draconian ideas. I think he assumed this stuff flew under the radar.
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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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I'm kind of a hermit. Left to my own devices, I won't submerge myself in anything further afield than the driveway.
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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.
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I always want to try and see what the appeal is in anything. It's the healthiest and most honest approach.
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The more I learn about stuff the more conscious I become of grave gaps in my knowledge.
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