Julian Casablancas
If you're in a bar and a certain song comes on and the vibe is just different, it evokes the kinds of things that you want to feel, and if music can do that it's a very special thing.
One of the big songwriting things for me has always been: always think what you do sucks. Because the second you stop believing that, you suck. And that's a fact.
I'm always writing something. I've got so much stuff, I don't know what to do with it. Some of it will be Strokes, some of it will be I don't know what - stuff for pop singers. TV themes. I've got a jar stuffed with songs, all these ideas that are just me humming into a recording device.
It find it funny how people from Boston and New York hate each other because of pro teams.
I am a fan of 'SNL' and a big Jimmy Fallon fan, too.
I have to say, I'm good with gifts. If I find something perfect for a certain person, I'll just get it and put it away in a kind of nook under my bed - a little gift hutch, if you prefer.
Songwriting is hard - it's so easy to fall into the same traps. It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.
The problem with touring isn't the traveling and the shows, it's the vegetal state you get into.
People often put me in a V-neck tennis club sweater, driving a Bentley, but my life wasn't like that.
Whenever I go to shows, I end up looking at what shoes the guy onstage is wearing and the jacket he's got on. And when you know everything's gonna be under scrutiny, it makes you feel more comfortable if you have cool stuff.
I find it funny how people from Boston and New York hate each other because of pro teams. But, like, everyone on the Red Sox is a random millionaire athlete from somewhere else.
I'm just going to try and be a good dad and not spoil the kid: give him love and encouragement but also discipline. Me and my woman, we don't want him to feel too entitled.
Make sure your heart is singing right until the day it stops.Collection: Heart
Art is the image of life, it's purpose simply to enhance it.Collection: Art
The best artists are the ones that work the hardest, and if you work hard enough, you'll eventually experience the happy accidents that are art.Collection: Art
Forgive them even if they are not sorryCollection: Sorry
A band is a great way to destroy a friendship, and a tour's a great way to destroy a band.Collection: Band
I feel like I've given up a lot of my fantasies. I just want to do things differently, and to a lot of people that's annoying. I like weird stuff. I always hoped if we had a big success it would be on our own terms.Collection: People
It was 100,000 years before we figured out what to do with fire. Imagine cavemen, sitting in front of a fire, eating raw meat for 100 thousand years.Collection: Years
I think you can only get closer to satisfaction but you never fully arrive.Collection: Thinking
I feel slightly confused about certain things. Practical and tactical things. When you try to make everyone happy… in the end you've got to make yourself happy.Collection: Confused
Just slow it down enough to enjoy the ride.Collection: Enough
I guess the best thing about marriage is the fact you've got the coolest partner you can imagine by your side for all the things you're going to face in your life. So far, Juliet's been there for me. She's been good for my voice, good for my everything.Collection: Voice
We're so quick to point out our own flaws in others.Collection: Flaws
I want to be one of those people, be they writers, poets, musicians, who leaves clues for the next generation. The really good people leave clues that help feed the human race. That's my aspiration.Collection: Race
Kids are always honest, 'cause they don't think they're ever going to die.Collection: Kids
I kinda like messing with perception a little bit. Kind of what drugs do sometimes, and drinking. I mean, you know, you mess with your mind a little bit to see life from different angles. Within reason, if you can handle it.Collection: Drinking
Doing heroin is like walking around with a terrorist as your friend. It's like taking a terrorist around to parties You never know when it's going to blow up on you.Collection: Party
It's like an inner struggle for me, between saying I don't give a **** and trying to make it work. You want to do the right thing, but I'm sick of people thinking I'm difficult.Collection: Struggle
I'm really grateful. But I never had the rock star dream. I thought it would be cool to be a modern-day composer.Collection: Dream
Don't you dare get to the top and not know what to do.Collection: Dare
Now, the good of business is put above anything else, as corporations have become the new ruling body. Most decisions seem to be made like ones of a medieval king: whatever makes profit while ignoring and repressing the truth about whatever suffering it may cause (like pop music, for that matter).Collection: Kings
The way Lou Reed wrote and sang about drugs and sex, about the people around him - it was so matter-of-fact.Collection: Sex
I see myself out of my own eyes, which means I have no idea what's going on the other way around. I just think I try to be a good person, and I fail.Collection: Mean
In L.A., it's so sunny out all the time that even though I'm working all day I have this illusion that I'm on some kind of vacation. New York is so condensed and exciting but you stay there too long and all that turns into anxiety a little bit. It's nice to escape here and there.Collection: Nice
The British press can be so annoying. They jerk you off with one hand and smack you with the other.Collection: Hands
The only goal right now that I can have, the only thing I can offer right now, is the need to get good at music, do something with quality.Collection: Goal
I'd like to just get to a point where maybe we can say something that will be matterful. That's definitely not a word, by the way.Collection: Way
It's that feeling when you hear your favourite song. That feeling, whether you're in a car, at a party or alone at home or in bed and you hear this song and it just hits you so strong - that’s what we aim for.Collection: Song
When I hear Sam Cooke's 'A Change Is Gonna Come', it frustrates me because no matter how hard I try, I can never be that good.Collection: Trying
I don’t shake at the site of alcohol anymore. I don’t feel the need for it. If anything I’ll get stoned. I always told myself if it got to the point that it was affecting my songwriting and music that I’d stop. And it did get to the point.Collection: Alcohol
When you first start writing a song, it’s fun, then when you start recording it, it’s fun, but by the time you’ve finished recording it, you’re sick of it.Collection: Fun
It’s that feeling when you hear your favourite song. That feeling, whether you’re in a car, at a party or alone at home or in bed and you hear this song and it just hits you so strong – that’s what we aim for.Collection: Strong