James Mercer Quotes
When I started The Shins, it really was just me, alone, but it was still The Shins. I was totally recording stuff and writing songs as The Shins and all of that. So the beginning inception of the whole thing was some sort of a lie, I guess.
Quotes to Explore
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I don't have any office; I can write everywhere. So, I put a piece of paper on the table, and then I travel. Literally, writing for me is like travelling. It's getting out of myself and living another life - maybe a better life.
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Sometimes things in life take a few years to digest, and they find their way into the work later on. Sometimes I'm writing about things from eight years ago-they just took a long time to distill and come out in the appropriate way.
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Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone's singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.
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It was failing part of my Ph.D. that led me into novel-writing. By then I was 29, had remarried and had a second baby. It struck me that I'd lost my path in life and I felt frustrated. That's when I started to write.
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I'd love to be a pop star - at heart.
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We are increasingly open to understanding how we are all connected and that if we sink the ship that we are all on, we all drown. However, we have simultaneously become so focused on our own life experiences that we think we are alone.
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Ottawa is a hot spot of Canadian crime writing, with perhaps the greatest concentration of active, involved, published crime writers anywhere.
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If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.
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The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theater. You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when I do Western films, the need for originality is greater. Then I become very conscious about the writing.
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I wrote small stories here and there, then bigger ones. Some were even written for money. I signed up for a writing class and snuck my first assignment on a yellow legal pad in a partner's office while he read through my memo.
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From 1999 on - until 2003 - I covered publishing in a weekly column for Wired.com and wrote for several other publications - altogether writing over 150 articles.
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If it is indeed impossible - or at least very difficult - to inhabit the consciousness of an animal, then in writing about animals there is a temptation to project upon them feelings and thoughts that may belong only to our own human mind and heart.
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Instead of writing songs for girls, I tend to write albums, which I guess is a bit weird.
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I love writing songs. I love doing my radio show and talking to the fans and listening to what they have to say, but there's a certain responsibility that comes along with being given the gift of music. I take that seriously, but at the same time I try to use it to do something that makes a difference in a positive way.
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It usually takes me 20 to 90 minutes to write a song because once I start, I don't stop. If I start writing a song, and you try to have a conversation with me, you're a bad person.
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There's no such thing as a writer's block. If you're having trouble writing, well, pick up the pen and write. No matter what, keep that hand moving. Writing is really a physical activity.
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There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.
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I never have written a movie, but there are some bad movies out there. I can make one. I definitely want to get into that because that's how you, at my level, would get a lead in a movie - by writing a low budget thing for myself. So I gotta get to it.
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The problem with too beautiful a view is that it's alright for the mulling stage. But for the writing stage, you want to be somewhere without a view, especially if it is very different from what you're writing.
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My mother bought a piano, put it in the front room, and I just started writing my songs.
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The next time you find yourself racing quickly down the street, know that you're not only running to your next appointment, you are literally running from contact with your truest feelings, deepest needs and most valuable insights.
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I've always been a secret locked-room fanatic. I read my first one when I was about ten or 11, Agatha Christie's 'Murder on the Orient Express,' with David Niven and Peter Ustinov on the cover.
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When I started The Shins, it really was just me, alone, but it was still The Shins. I was totally recording stuff and writing songs as The Shins and all of that. So the beginning inception of the whole thing was some sort of a lie, I guess.
