Brett Dennen Quotes
Songs don't really feel like me unless I somehow shed a little secret or open myself somehow or be vulnerable. When I'm singing these songs, it feels like me, and that comes with the vulnerabilities and the strengths and the moments of triumph or whatever.
Quotes to Explore
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I don't really like to explain my songs.
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My hair and make-up secret is 'the messier the better.'
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Many of the songs on Undertow were written at the time Opiate came out.
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I wrote poetry before I wrote songs, and T.S. Eliot was my inspiration. I love his honesty and try to bring that to my own songwriting.
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The West German population would protest passionately if it knew what secret meetings between the federal chancellor, McCoy, and foreign and Nazi generals are planning.
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I love writing songs.
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With my songs I tried to prove that there is love.
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A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.
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The songs I love to sing are story songs, from Yiddish songs to Tom Waits.
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My biggest advice for girls – and this is something that I wish I could have known when I was younger – is to have thick skin. It's something that you definitely develop when you get older, but when I first started, I was so obsessed with pleasing everybody. I wanted everybody to like me and to like my songs.
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Carlos was a character, a character fabricated by Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, fabricated by the secret services of the epoch, fabricated by the governments of the epoch, by the radical groups of the epoch, by the communications media.
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No one can keep a secret better than a child.
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I love the smell of a theater. The old rooms and the carpet and all that stuff. I love to tell stories. Even before I was doing music, I saw myself as a director. So most of my songs come in a play form, you know, where there are characters and stories, so I like to go beyond just the song sometimes.
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My books have occasionally been of mixed success. It's not like I have gone from triumph to triumph. I have had a couple of books do very, very well and a couple do very, very badly.
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Dad really had little to do with the songs, except to perform them.
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I'd love to say that I could write political songs, but I don't feel clued-up enough.
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I believe you have to live the songs.
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It's so amazing to hear a crowd of people singing one of your songs. It's the best feeling.
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Once I had started, I discovered the secret pleasure of writing a novel. It's such an immersive, deep commitment. With short stories, you're continually having to start again from scratch, but with a novel you only need one good idea every few years.
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Focusing on a shared history of trauma and victimization alleviates their searing sense of isolation, but usually at the price of having to deny their individual differences: Members can belong only if they conform to the common code. Isolating oneself into a narrowly defined victim group promotes a view of others as irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst, which eventually only leads to further alienation. Gangs, extremist political parties, and religious cults may provide solace, but they rarely foster the mental flexibility needed to be fully open to what life has to offer and as such cannot liberate their members from their traumas. Well-functioning people are able to accept individual differences and acknowledge the humanity of others.
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Songs don't really feel like me unless I somehow shed a little secret or open myself somehow or be vulnerable. When I'm singing these songs, it feels like me, and that comes with the vulnerabilities and the strengths and the moments of triumph or whatever.
