Jason Isbell Quotes
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I write pretty much year-round, but I definitely do more when a deadline is looming.
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Sometimes a song becomes rhetoric, but you have to really empathise. You also have to leave room for both sides of the argument: even if you're not telling the other side, you have to put that part in parentheses and make sure it's understood.
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Good sounds, they just make you feel good.
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There was a point when I told my daddy I didn't want to go hunting anymore.
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My wife may be the role model for our daughter in some ways, but I think I represent what she'll put up with. You know, I think one day she'll say, 'OK my dad behaved this way, so if whoever I happen to fall in love with behaves this way it's got to be OK because I love my dad.'
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I like those kinds of songs that have details that you remember and that have stories that mean something and that open up into different levels philosophically. I like those kinds of movies, and I like those kinds of books.
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I didn't grow up with a lot of money, but I grew up with a lot of opportunities that many people don't have.
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At the end of the day, I'm just trying to write a song that I like, that I'm not afraid to turn loose on the world. I do read a lot. I know a lot of people who read more, but I do try to keep a book in my hand most of the time, and I think that informs any kind of output that I'm going to have.
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I think for anything to be successful, your problems have to become different problems over time.
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I've spent a lot of time in a rock n' roll band trying to fight off the fact that I was old enough to rent a car. And it's all sort of rushed in at once now. And I like it.
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I'll take a certain concern of my own or a situation and try to frame it around a fictional story, but sometimes just straight-up autobiographical songs work well, and sometimes a story is better. I like stories. I like to hear them. I don't think there are enough of them in songs anymore.
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If you're the person whose problems were solved when you were born, your job is to try and help the people who aren't in that situation. It's very easy to say you're tired of political discussion when all of your problems are solved. I keep trying to think of it that way.
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I don't start a song with an idea of what ingredients are going to go into a song. It's not like a recipe. I will normally either talk from personal experience or I'll make a character and then try to allow that character to behave the way he or she naturally would.
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I went to school for creative writing in college, and I wound up about six hours short of my degree.
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A lot of people make records where there are a couple songs worth listening to and you skip through the rest, and I don't want to do that because those records bore me pretty bad.
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No matter what you thought your plans were, that's not how things are going to work out, and that's the only way you can really, I think, live successfully.
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I think a lot of people are scared, and I know I was scared to get sober, at least using this as an excuse; 'I don't want to be one of those sober people.' And I don't think you have to be. I think you can be one of those people who happens to be sober.
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The fact that I have a Southern accent and write about a lot of rural things leads people to put me in the country category.
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I'm not trying to steer people in a direction. I'm just trying to move them. Wherever it takes them, it doesn't matter to me. I just want them to be moved in one way or another, and that's a hard thing to do, I think.
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My wife is so very important to me that it's made my mom more important to me. It's made every woman I know more important to me.
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I'm not looking to be a superstar. I just want to be in a room with good people who are similar to me and are at least open to things that I have to say.
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My dad, as much as I love him, has one of those signs - 'The Isbell's' - on his front door, and he's got the damn apostrophe in there. I haven't strangled him yet.
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I need enough room to eventually throw a baseball with a child; that's all the yard I need. That's all I want.
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Democracy can tie your hands in a rock 'n' roll band, you know? It can be a great thing, but if you've got a certain amount of vision and you write a lot of songs, it's sometimes better to have your own band and make your own decisions.