John Darnielle
If you get into a fight and somebody punches you, you get two feelings. One: That really hurts. Two: That relief in the realness of, like, Wow, this is what it is. It's not an intellectual process.Collection: Hurt
People want you to play the songs they know. I try not to reflect too much, and I don't really like to focus too much on myself.Collection: Song
The process of touring is always so weird to me. Once you've made the album, that's over, you move along.Collection: Moving
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.Collection: Writing
Music is a permanent art, it will always go through phases where you like it and are in tune with it, but saying that music "got bad" is infantile. The same is true with your life.Collection: Art
You learn to present dark things without including their ability to harm, treasuring them for what they are.Collection: Dark
It's a cliché to state that one should think like a child, but it's clear that kids know something that the world tries to make you unlearn later in life.Collection: Children
My son, who sees me almost every day of his life, will look at me and go, "I know that dude! I like that dude!" It's incredibly affirming.Collection: Son
The reality of having a kid involves day-to-day practicality - not broader philosophical outlooks.Collection: Philosophical
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.Collection: Ideas
From a very young age, I was the kind of kid you can just put anywhere and I'd still find stuff to be stoked about.Collection: Kids
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.Collection: Morning
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.Collection: Writing
I grew up in Southern California, so the whole concept of a local music history is still kinda novel to me.Collection: California
I just started going to shows. I don't know how submerged I am: I feel guilty that I don't get out more, but I really like being inside the house.Collection: House
The more I learn about stuff the more conscious I become of grave gaps in my knowledge.Collection: Gaps
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.Collection: Two
I couldn't name more than a couple of good drum'n'bass acts, and I have no idea what's big in the dance world right now.Collection: Couple
I don't celebrate milestones and I don't do anniversary editions. It's not my style to reflect on accomplishments.Collection: Accomplishment
I start writing, pull whatever images happen to occur to me and make up a story, instead of starting with details that are real and I know of and going from there.Collection: Real
Literature is a mystical place for me. It's not dry. It's where miracles happen.Collection: Miracle
I don't like to say, "Oh, I don't like this kind of music." I like to listen to it and try to see what people who like it get out of it.Collection: People
I get nostalgic about having lived in Ames, Iowa, even though being a vegetarian in Iowa is not fun.Collection: Fun
I still get really excited looking at stuff that I've seen every day for 20 years.Collection: Years
People involved in my personal life make fun of me a lot for not being jaded.Collection: Fun
Kayfabe is kind of a code. To break kayfabe is to let people know that the punch was not real and that the match was scripted.Collection: Real
You always feel like your 18-year-old self in some sense. And that's what walking through New York on a June evening feels like - you feel like it's Friday and you're 17 years old.Collection: Friday
If you're standing in the middle of a ring and you're playing the villain, and everyone is booing and throwing things at you, that's real.Collection: Real
Not everybody relates to pain, but if you can watch other people playacting it, you can absorb some of that vibe. It's like watching horror movies - you want to have the experience, but in a safe environment.Collection: Pain
In wrestling, people just throw each other around, possibly actually bleed, and are still friends in the locker room afterwards. But there's a real glee - a feeling goes up in the arena, especially on non-TV days. If it's just people in a room and somebody starts to bleed, that's very exciting.Collection: Real
Men tend to dominate whatever public discourse they participate in, and another big part of feminism is to let women have their say. Men's voices can be welcome at the table, but there is a time and a place, and maybe it's now, for men to make a little less noise, make their needs less known, and listen to the needs of others.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Real
It's hard always to say what it is one likes about a place, for me. I feel it.Collection: Likes
If my songs are being listened to between any other songs, that is awesome, and I'm glad people are getting something out of them. We go to countries like Germany, where I can't imagine that all of my fans are engaging with the lyrics first and foremost. I think they're catching a vibe, a feeling. I consider myself a lyricist first and foremost, but if you get something else out of what I do, that's fine too. I'm not sitting back and telling people how they have to take my stuff. We just want to play music, and hope that people like it.Collection: Country
I know it's a cliché to say I write for myself, but I write for myself.Collection: Writing
I crave music that'll sort of hurtle me into space and release me up there.Collection: Space
When I was kid, they always used to tell me to keep notebooks. I look at my shelves now and it's just nothing but notebooks. And if I haven't gotten an idea but I have time to work, I'll pull one out and I bet there will be five or six sentences that will kick me off.Collection: Notebook
I usually kind of can't wait until my records leak. Back in the day, you could give people tapes, but you can't do that anymore, because it would be available to everyone on the planet within an hour.Collection: People
Everybody is in various states of needing to transcend something. I believe in mental health care, but when we call people "crazy," we exclude them from our circle.Collection: Crazy
Diagnoses exist to help get people services they need - but there's no such thing as mental illness. We're all mentally ill.Collection: People
You can get into anything if you are determined. I always thought that with music, too.Collection: Determined
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.Collection: Feelings
I think it's a misconception that metal's about anger, obviously.Collection: Thinking
If my songs are being listened to between any other songs, that is awesome, and I'm glad people are getting something out of them.Collection: Song
I enjoy hearing people who are good at their instruments and who've found a distinctive voice.Collection: Voice
For me, moving is always a big opportunity. Its just a enough of a shift in outlook that every time I move, it seems to open something up.Collection: Moving
I think The Sunset Tree is really the album on which I really learned to trust other musicians, which is so important.Collection: Sunset
Adulthood is interesting to adults. But I would never want to write about stuff I dont feel everybody can connect to.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Life