Ben Folds
Now that I have found someone, I'm feeling more alone... than I ever have before.Collection: Alone
The clock never stops, never stops, never waits. We're growing old. It's getting late.
With the a cappella groups, every voice is like one string on a guitar, one note on the piano, or one cymbal, and you don't have the luxury of falling back on anything.
Rock and roll is - and should be - a kid's place.
There is still some art in pop music. But it can't happen if you're not inspired.
A lot of 18-year-olds are like old men. They think they've seen everything.
Because I write very simply, but inside the simplicity, there's a lot of subtlety. That's what I'm proud of.
Next door, there's an old man who lived to his nineties and one day passed away in his sleep. And his wife, she stayed for a couple of days and passed away. I'm sorry, I know that's a strange way to tell you that I know we belong.
Billy Joel and Joe Jackson were both great, and they both play piano.
The nature of honesty is that if someone has information or knows something about you that you don't want heard, then they have power over you.
Everybody knows it hurts to grow up... and we're still fighting it.
I do have that mindset - that most good art comes from some turmoil, from someone trying to come to some equilibrium, or come up and get a breath.
You never know when you put out an album that's unique whether it'll get beat up for it or not.
It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.
I'm older than I was, and I'm still washed-up, and I haven't changed my music one iota. It's just much easier to do this when people are being nice to you.
I used to do this big rant at the end of some gigs with Ben Folds Five. The band broke into this big heavy metal thing and I started as a joke to scream in a heavy metal falsetto. I found myself saying things like: Feel my pain, I am white, feel my pain.
Everyone, when you're a teenager and you're growing up, you do feel like your life is dramatic enough to be on a TV screen, but we know that it's not.
Maybe this is wrong, but I feel like I craft my songs carefully enough that I still find that fifteen years after having written one, it still works for me - I'm not cringing.
The reason I stop playing songs is usually because I get sick of them, and then they find themselves back into the set list at some point.
But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you that's the center of it, that is it. It's almost like there's something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if you're a songwriter that sings your material.
I'm not really a strange person or anything, so if there's music I like, usually there's other people who like it too.
Why would I want to sound like Joni Mitchell? I've got Joni Mitchell records, and they're great, and I couldn't possibly be that good.
I'm really good at writing 'almost hits'.
Even though I live in America more, I feel like when I go to Adelaide, that's when I get to go home.
The press is like any business. It's a group of really intelligent individuals that ends up being one slathering, one-eyed, drooling monster.
I'm aware that I'm very fringe, and it's nice that way.
My idea is to play with the people who you know want to get it right. Then it's fun and easy to record, and you can get down to details, like taking out cymbals so the verse doesn't dwarf the chorus, something like that.
The way I see it, there's only one melody for any song.
My job is to be some sort of music/lyric psychic, to figure out that that's the right song to not fight the lyric.
In many ways, I've chosen to be plain, almost too plain, too self-effacing. Like, if I record a vocal and I don't like the way it sounds, I would have them turn it up and take the reverb off it to make it as plain as possible.
The nice thing about age is worrying less and less about what people think.Collection: Nice
I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you.Collection: Love
Notes don't make music until you learn to insert silence between them.Collection: Silence
I do think that when you make repeated mistakes, it's usually because you're just not coming to grips with something.Collection: Mistake
People learn at the rate they are going to learn.Collection: People
I don't leave my neighborhood. I don't go anywhere. There are four blocks I live in and there are two coffee shops, one at each end of the block... so I don't do much driving... Some people would say they never see me because I don't go anywhere. I stay in the blue state of Nashville, in my bubble.Collection: Block
And all I really want to say is you're the reason I want to stay.Collection: Happy Love
I feel like a quote out of context, withholding the rest so I can be for you what you want to see.Collection: Want
Everybody knows it hurts to grow up...and we're still fighting it.Collection: Hurt
The piano is just a different animal. It's expensive, it's big, it's heavy, and it doesn't fit in the mix easily. Everyone grew up with a piano in their living room, so rocking out on the piano was accessible - it wasn't an upper-class thing. Now pianos have become very much a piece of furniture.Collection: Animal
Off the coast and I'm headed nowhereCollection: Coast
I drink a lot, probably too much. My scene while writing lyrics is always a bottle of scotch and stacks of note cards, pencil and pencil sharpener. I throw around note cards and drink.Collection: Writing
I've gotten to the point where I realize that I need to tell my truth in music and not walk around blabbing my mind.Collection: Mind
If I'm in a relationship and my girlfriend is sleeping with other people, I don't need to know who it is; I just want to know how she feels about it.Collection: Girlfriend
When someone really goes to tell you something about what they're thinking, they're going to wear that experience with them. That's what you have to share.Collection: Thinking
The less I talk in bars, write emails, express myself in an emotionally lewd way outside of my songwriting, the more I have to do it through my music.Collection: Writing
I could probably live in Bali the rest of my life and completely live in the sticks and have a f - king moped and make a record every couple of years and not step in public and break even like I do anyway. That's really tempting.Collection: Kings
What stupid f - king idiot gets married a second time if the first time didn't work out?Collection: Kings
My parents told me I must get married. I was seen as a failure if I didn't do it.Collection: Parent