Johnny Flynn Quotes

I feel really lucky that I somehow have blagged my way into loads of different experiences. I find making a film fascinating, I find making a play amazing, and working with my band and scoring things... it's all really cool. I'm just a glutton for experience, really.

Johnny Flynn

• Different
• Experience
• Amazing
• Band
• Cool

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• I've always identified as an actor. That's what I set out to do.

  

  Johnny Flynn

• Westminster politics is very unattractive, and people are channelling political energy into more inward questioning - there are a lot of musicians whose songs are all about feeling, and it's almost like that's the only safe place to express yourself.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • People
  • Political
  • Feeling

• If you're trying to do something wholly new, it's hard to fully trust it. But if you use forms that have come before, it lends your music weight and authority. It's also a way to acknowledge that it's not just you who's feeling these things. The emotions are coming through you from a whole history.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • Music
  • Trying
  • History

• My dad was an actor, and he always said that work was work; you can't turn your nose up at it. We didn't have much money when I was growing up, and he had this real work ethic, which I inherited.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • Up
  • Work
  • Real

• I think everyone in their 30s looks back at their 20s and thinks, 'Oh God, if I'd just done this and this, and not done that.'

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • God
  • Done

• I think the two are kind of synonymous for me; songwriting is like my form of diary making. It's how I process the world. Without doing that, I feel kind of lost. The characters that I play often come out in the songs and the challenges that they face, albeit in an abstract way.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • World
  • Lost

• My dad was an actor, and he made it all seem quite magical. It felt like a slightly subversive thing, telling stories, when all of my other friends' parents were builders or bank clerks. It's always seemed quite magical to me.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • Friends
  • Parents
  • Dad

• I'm not a funny person.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • Funny

• The moment you have children, it's like your heart gets out of your body, puts on clothes, and walks away.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • Children
  • Heart

• I just said, casually, 'You know, I passed up on auditioning for Einstein.' And my friend was like, 'You idiot, you have to do it!' She made me do it. I sent the tapes off assuming that somebody would say, 'Ha ha, very funny.'

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • Up
  • She
  • Funny

• I had a series of jobs in the small fishing village in West Wales where my family lived when I was a teenager. I worked as a fisherman in the day, and then the skipper and his wife ran a small restaurant - she'd cook the fish he caught.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • Family
  • She
  • Small

• I like getting older. I always looked younger than I was, and I found that people wouldn't give me the room to speak. The older I get, it's like, 'Oh, I'm still talking, and they're still listening.'

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • People
  • Listening

• I'm not a fan of taking too long in the studio. I always do one vocal take and jump out of the control room, and people push me back in... It's a real turn-off to hear things that are too polished. I feel like I've almost fought for the right to be that kind of musician - we used to be on a major label, and now we're on an indie.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • People
  • Long
  • Real

• Diane Cluck is part of the anti-folk movement in New York. She's got a really haunting voice, and she usually sings in the pentatonic scale.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • She

• The truth is there's always a hum of people playing folk music in cities.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • People
  • Music
  • Truth

• I've never done anything like 'Brotherhood' before. It was a great challenge to take up a part in a live audience sitcom - it was amazing.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • Up
  • Great
  • Live

• My thing about demos is that you usually prefer them to the finished thing.

  

  Johnny Flynn

• I'm not really interested in myself in my writing. I can't see myself in the songs, even though I know different parts of me are there.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • Different
  • Writing

• I actually do bits of my writing in sort of incidental spaces - when I'm traveling on the Tube or on a bus. More often than not, it's a reaction to how you feel about something, and if you're sitting down and concentrating on, 'I must write something,' then you can't have a truthful reaction.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • Writing

• I always love going to New York.

  

  Johnny Flynn

• We all have these shades in our nature: it's a spectrum within all of us.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • Nature

• You might as well acknowledge what came before, because you can never do something wholly new. It's not unoriginal to make your references clear.

  

  Johnny Flynn

• Weirdly, my dad didn't want me to become an actor, he was always quite resistant to it. He told me as much many times. That just made it more attractive to me.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • Dad

• I have a classical music background. I studied violin and trumpet.

  

  Johnny Flynn
  • Music