Bradford Cox
I'm tired of watching attractive people trying to be ugly, struggling for authenticity. Why not be yourself?Collection: Being Yourself
I don't like the sound of my own voice. And, for people I don't know, their impression of me is what they read on the internet, and they're so far off a lot of the time. I think people are intimidated by me, and I don't know why. Sometimes even my own bandmates can be intimidated, or irritated, by me. I come across as arrogant somehow. In reality, I've probably got the lowest self-esteem of anybody I know, which has really been rubbed in my face lately in personal situations.Collection: Reality
When I do a record, it sounds more punk and raw. Or it will sound louder, or it will sound more shocking. Or mind-boggling. I'll be trying to figure it out, but once I've got it figured out I'll be like, I know this; I know where this came from. I think art is most interesting when the intention is not clear.Collection: Art
I think teenagers just don't have the persistence to pretend to like something they don't anymore. I used to do that - make myself like stuff that didn't immediately appeal to me. When you're 17 and checking out John Cage records from the library. It's not like it's got the hooks of a Ramones record, or a Beach Boys record. But at the same time, you're like, I know there's something in here that I'm supposed to understand. And then eventually you find it.Collection: Beach
I was only in the public eye because I was annoying. You know how neurotic people may ask for one thing when they may really want another thing? It was like I was asking for attention, but I didn't really want attention.Collection: Eye
I don't think you should make music to make music, just to show that you can. That's the opposite of vitality.Collection: Thinking
As a homosexual, my job is simply to sodomize mediocrity.Collection: Jobs
When I go on a nostalgia trip it's not aesthetic. For me it's about trying to recapture the smell or the feeling of something that I've experienced in the past personally.Collection: Past
I'm more into Neil Young and radical honesty.Collection: Honesty
I think the younger kids need to realize there's this whole forgotten 90s that people don't really talk about.Collection: Kids
I'm obsessed with five different things a day. It's like lightbulbs in a Christmas light chain.Collection: Different
I read a lot - surveys of vernacular music. A lot of it is the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music, which I've loved since I was in high school. They had it at the library and I always thought that was interesting, even when I was into punk and stuff. Just the history of storytelling and the amount of melancholy a lot of old music has.Collection: School
I don't know if I have any real aspirations to be an actor. It was just something I was asked to do in sort of a friend way. And I thought, Why not?Collection: Real
I've been used for writing rhythm guitar chords for a long time because it's so easy to play and chords just sound good on it.Collection: Writing
I always write the first and last song of an album first, and then the middle just kind of happens.Collection: Song
Sometimes, I do have something to say, so I'll sit there and I'll write a song to someone - and then I just throw it away because it makes me cringe.Collection: Song
I don't have the capacity to write stuff consciously. When I do, it's really awful.Collection: Writing
I've been going through some personal things that have stirred up a lot of old wounds.Collection: Old Wounds
I need punk rock. It's the medicine for me, but it's bitter and sickening. If you don't need it - if you're happy and healthy - run toward that.Collection: Running
I refuse to put myself into a situation in which I have to face some kind of "I'm losing it" kind of thing. I'm not "losing it"; it's changed. What it is is changing.Collection: Faces
I used to be a lot more engaged on an improvisational level than other people. I was always on tour and always had a guitar in my hands, and when I went back home, my battery was at full charge. I had a lot of energy to get off, just impulses that I could draw upon.Collection: Home
Contrary to popular belief, maybe, I'm a really friendly guy, I guess, and I really like meeting people. And I'm not really super impressed even if you're my hero; I can just rap with you and we can hang. I'm not gonna like sit there and bite my lip and ask questions about certain songs - okay I might do that once or twice. But it's just, like, two people hanging out.Collection: Song
The first thing I think I ever played in public, aside from singing in church, would have been - and this is a true story - when I was about nine or 10 years old, I was obsessed with Twin Peaks. I played the theme from Twin Peaks on a little tiny Casio keyboard. People politely applauded. I just fell in love with that song and thought it was very heartbreaking.Collection: Song
You don't need to drink if you have emotional problems.Collection: Emotional
I like my solitude, and I'm a strong-willed person; I'm a very hard-to-be-around person sometimes, I guess.Collection: Strong
Usually I'm not really conscious of what's going on. I don't have a lot of memories onstage. At all.Collection: Memories
A song like "Walkabout", it's totally imitative. The goal of that song was to make people happy, and I've never really made a song to make people happy before. I really genuinely wanted people to listen to that song and have their spirits lifted.Collection: Song
I was trying to write a song based on a story in a random book of Puerto Rican short stories that I found in a thrift store. I thought it was really dark, and so I tried to interpret it. I've always been interested in writing from other people's perspectives and other gender perspectives.Collection: Song
You're always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that's maybe even too weird for your own taste. In my case it's kind of weird because I started out being known more for ambient things and ambiguous music, but what's experimental for me is the more traditional structure. For me, experimenting involves traditionalism.Collection: Trying
All music is devotional, whether it's devotion to products, face washes, creams, plastic. Everybody is devoted to something.Collection: Devotion
I collaborate a little bit with different aspects of my own mind. I kick my own ass instead of kicking other people's asses.Collection: Mind
I'm not the guy in the dress with the blood and the unrequited gay whatever - which, according to my psychiatrist, my gayness is a form of narcissism but you'll have to ask him about that.Collection: Gay
What could be more experimental than me writing a straight up love song?Collection: Song
I like playing at public schools. I like when there's more of a diverse audience. I'll play wherever people want to hear my music, and I'll be glad and grateful for the opportunity, but I'd rather not play for a bunch of white privileged kids. I'm not meaning that in a disrespectful way; you go where people want to hear your music. So if that's where people want to hear me play, I'm glad to play for them. But I'd rather play for an audience where half of them were not into it than one where all of them were pretending to be into it, for fear of being uncultured.Collection: Grateful
I realized I had written maybe, I dunno, the first ever asexual love song. Where it's really just about a fear of dying alone - you need contact, you need love, you need empathy. You need this relationship but if there's no sex involved, people act like it's not a legitimate relationship.Collection: Song
I'm interested in acting as much as I'm interested in gardening. I want to garden, eventually. I want to learn how to do a lot of things. I've always wanted to learn how to paint, too. I'd like to try everything, but music is my reason for living.Collection: Garden
I feel very strongly about the subject matter in The Dallas Buyer's Club - about AIDS and people fighting illnesses, and fighting for survival against bad conditions.Collection: Fighting
It was like I was asking for attention, but I didn't really want attention.Collection: Attention
Everybody just needs to realize that when you write something you're just in one mood. I was told I needed to write it and it was overdue; I don't even remember what day it was.Collection: Writing
I've always been interested in writing from other people's perspectives and other gender perspectives.Collection: Writing
Talk to Arto Lindsay and I'm sure he's tired of people asking him about DNA; he's probably really into what he's doing now, which is good stuff. I guess I probably feel like that. But I'm obviously not comparing myself to someone as iconic as that.Collection: Tired
Audiences tend to dig the earlier stuff by any given musician, and the artists themselves always tend to prefer the thing that they're doing now.Collection: Artist
I've got this thing where I always kind of diss the older stuff and favor the newer stuff. I mean, it's not just my thing; every artist or musician is like that, I guess.Collection: Mean
The same people that always think I'm pretentious will think I'm pretentious, and the people who relate to me will continue to relate to me.Collection: Thinking
When I started having a couple of beers and loosening up, I realized how many years I had wasted going back to my hotel room alone when I could have gone and just had a beer or two.Collection: Couple
The sober guy is always going to have this air of arrogance or self-righteousness, but it's not my intention. I just knew that if I drank, I'd have a drinking problem.Collection: Drinking
You think about people like Elvis, Kurt Cobain, or the Beatles, who grew up without privilege and needed a certain validation through peoples' acceptance, or admiration from their peers. And money is part of that, but it always comes too late.Collection: Acceptance
People roll their eyes and say, "Oh god, he's not rich or famous." I say it's relative. I mean, look at me: I'm 115 pounds and I grew up without money. To me, I'm rich because I don't have to worry about paying rent. I don't think about money now.Collection: Mean
I see a lot of people doing an "'80s thing" who weren't even born until the '90s.Collection: People
Musicians and artists are not... it's not like politicians or something where you can't really affect them. There's not like this separate caste system where it's like, "I'm the musician, you're the audience. Never the two shall meet." It was a case where it was like, "Hey, you know what? I'm on your level, man."Collection: Men