I think listening to a lot of Lou Reed when I was a teenager is what encouraged me to just sing however felt good to me. John Darnielle More Quotes by John Darnielle More Quotes From John Darnielle 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 heart kids years Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive. John Darnielle alive stupid feels At 23, you can completely, literally reinvent yourself if you want to. John Darnielle reinventing-yourself ifs want Normal adult shopping is something I will never actually do, because it's no more possible for me to go shopping like normal adults do than it is for a man with no legs to wake up one day and walk. I can't miss shopping like you'd miss things you once had. I miss it in a different way. I miss it like you would miss a train. John Darnielle shopping missing men 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. John Darnielle disappointment waiting people People say friends don't destroy one another. What do they know about friends? John Darnielle knows people I seem to get the best work when I'm angry and depressed and alienated. John Darnielle angry best-work seems North Carolina was on the vanguard of being for [ trans rights ], and that's why we're seeing this push back. The conservatives noticed that there had been a lot of progress and they tried to tamp it down. John Darnielle progress north-carolina rights The studio's a collaborative environment. I just try to let people bring their own ideas to the songs and see what happens. John Darnielle song people ideas What's funny is that people think, "Well there has to be something more than wrestling, because wrestling has such an absurd quality to it." But if you tell a love story, people don't ask what else is in there. They say, "Oh, it's just a love story." All stories have many levels, but these ones show their hand and say, "You might want to look a little deeper." John Darnielle wrestling hands thinking One way you can get really close to God is to sin as hard as you can. John Darnielle get-real sin way 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 important people thinking Books are like rocks. You hold one in your hand and look at it in various lights to get a sense of it, and then when you get a good angle, you throw it through a window to see what happens. John Darnielle rocks light book 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. John Darnielle artist wise people There is something fierce and starved about first ideas. John Darnielle fierce ideas firsts I really love Durham more than any place I've ever been; some small towns can be really provincial and strangling, but Durham is the best city in the world. John Darnielle durham cities-in-the-world towns Good things never last, bad things never die. John Darnielle dies lasts good-things 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 fate life people Back in the 90s, if you did mail order in music, you could make a good living doing it if you could hustle. John Darnielle hustle mail order 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. John Darnielle strange writing people
