I can remember being eight years old and having infinite possibilities. But life ends up being so much less that we thought it would be when we were kids, with relationships that are so empty and stupid and brutal. If you don't find a way to break the chain and change in some way, then you wind up, as the rhyme goes: a murder of one, for sorrow.

Adam Duritz

Categorized in : Kids Stupid Eight

I've spent most of my life living in cities where people are obsessed with looking down on people from everywhere else. You get so used to doing it that you start to believe it's simply what everyone does. It makes for an atmosphere of unwelcome that penetrates much of our modern life. It's a shame really because a couple days in Oklahoma will open your eyes to how much better it would be if the rest of the country was filled with a few more people from Oklahoma.

Adam Duritz

couple believe country

There is nothing more important you can ever do for this world than to wake up and be a part of it.

Adam Duritz

wake-up important world

Over and over again in my life, I find closeness to other people and proximity to other people really painful; that's part of my mental illness, social anxiety. Closeness to other people is really hard, but it's also a shame because it's all you want too. But it doesn't always work.

Adam Duritz

anxiety want people

Sometimes the world seems like a big hole. You spend all your life shouting down it and all you hear are echoes of some idiot yelling nonsense down a hole.

Adam Duritz

yelling echoes world

If you've never stared off into the distance, then your life is a shame.

Adam Duritz

shame distance life-is

A lot of life is about how you feel relating to dealing with this person or that person. If this person makes you feel good, then they're a person to be around; if they don't, they're not. Being in a band is different. The group is the more important part, and you have to kind of shift the way you look at life when you're in a group of people that you work with.

Adam Duritz

feel-good important people

A long December and there's reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last.

Adam Duritz

long believe years

I've been playing music most of my life.

Adam Duritz

playing-music

That's where the songs come from: that's what I'd most want people to understand. What sounds good or looks good, that's nothing. The only worthwhile thing in art is seeing someone else's heart.

Adam Duritz

worthwhile-things song art

We waste a lot of our lives sometimes. There are people sitting across from us who would make the whole world better if we spent more time with them in it, but we can't get across that gully.

Adam Duritz

waste sitting people

I'm really good in pain. I snapped my leg in half on stage and played a whole show. But I can't sit there with someone that loves me.

Adam Duritz

legs pain half

Bravery is what you can do in the face of things that hurt and scare you, but you do it anyway.

Adam Duritz

scare hurt bravery

I think that, often, the people who can make you happy are right there, and having them in your life would make your life better, but you can't see how to do it.

Adam Duritz

make-you-happy people thinking

If you want to really love someone, you've got to let go and loosen up and just care.

Adam Duritz

care want letting-go

You want to embrace, but I can't figure out how to hold on to it.

Adam Duritz

embrace figures want

All my songs are where I am.

Adam Duritz

song

I feel like I've been in love, but I have stood aside from it over and over again in my life. It's all you want, but it's terrifying.

Adam Duritz

been-in-love want feels

Losing fights, or even winning fights, can be heartbreaking, and you can throw that away, but the truth is that it does make our lives better.

Adam Duritz

heartbreaking fighting winning

I find that truly heartbreaking that, like, it's such a common, constant thing in people's lives - a brutal abuse of people by other people, and it's just accepted.

Adam Duritz

heartbreaking abuse people

You live through stuff, and it affects the way you feel about the world, and you write about it.

Adam Duritz

stuff writing world