Stephen Malkmus Quotes
We care if people like what we did. If you're just making records for yourself, why put them out and do all these interviews and do touring? I'm a huge music fan, and this is what I do with my artistic time. It's all I really do, except hang out with my family. I value human relationships, and it's a way for me to interact with the world and feel like I'm part of something.
Quotes to Explore
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Writing songs is an essential part of my life: my mother teaches piano, and I have inherited my grandparents' passion for music, especially from my grandfather Tommy, who was a great drummer. It's no coincidence that I play the drums best, but I am also good with the guitar and the piano.
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The music business is one of a few places where everything you've heard about it seems entirely cliche, but it's true.
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I listened to country music my whole life. I started writing music when I was a teenager. It all came out country.
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The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
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When I was growing up, I wasn't in bands, and had really no intention of ever doing music. I went out to California for college, and kind of on a whim started making music really as a joke, and over the course of the next five years started playing a lot of shows, and music became this really integral part of my identity.
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Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
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But anyone who knows anything about the music industry knows it's not only about the music.
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My music is a luxury.
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Music is the voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.
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I grew up watching American films, listening to American music, and it's a big contribution to the rest of the world. I mean, American jazz, for me, is the best thing culturally that America has produced.
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Everybody always wants to rebel against their parents' music, but nobody listened to music louder than my dad.
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If our kids want to do music, they are going to have to have a hard row to hoe just like any other band under the sun, and they're going to have to want it more than anyone else.
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You know, the thing that struck me about Civil War music was how bloody it was; it was full of hatred. There was incredible vitriol in it.
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A composer knows that music is written by human beings for human beings and that music is a continuation of life, not something separated from it.
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Trying to write music that's sensitive to 400 years ago takes a bit of madness, as it's such a long stretch of time.
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The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.
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While I'm working, I stick with music that won't distract me - the dub stylings of Scientist and King Tubby, maybe some Beethoven string quartets.
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Where words fail, music speaks.
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A lot of political music to me can be rather pedantic and corny, and when it's done right - like Bruce Springsteen or Jackson Browne or great satire from Randy Newman, there's nothing better.
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I'm not as aware of categories in music as some people are. To me it's just music. I'm interested in all kinds of music.
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I refuse to make uninspired music.
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Occasionally when I'm procrastinating writing, I'll while away the hours on iTunes. You can just keep going forever and find these bands you'd never normally hear of.
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Willie Mays was the best baseball player I ever saw. He could do anything.
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We care if people like what we did. If you're just making records for yourself, why put them out and do all these interviews and do touring? I'm a huge music fan, and this is what I do with my artistic time. It's all I really do, except hang out with my family. I value human relationships, and it's a way for me to interact with the world and feel like I'm part of something.
