John Gourley Quotes

I like the challenge of writing music without being the coolest guy or band in the room.

John Gourley Portugal. The Man

• Music
• Writing
• Guy
• Band
• Challenge

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Quotes to Explore

• When I was around eight, I learned how to touch-type at school, and I received a computer as a present. I started writing plays, and for many years I thought I would be a playwright.

  

  Gabrielle Zevin
  • Writing
  • School
  • Present

• Well, we like to let down our hair and pep it up at the dances, but we keep it slower when we broadcast. We have to please everybody, and that softer music appeals to the larger amount of people. It's like eating too much cake. You have to have your steak too.

  

  Vaughn Monroe
  • People
  • Up
  • Music

• Country music is three chords and the truth.

  

  Harlan Howard
  • Music
  • Country
  • Truth

• I read my books to writing workshops and friends, and I'm often focussed just on keeping them entertained. I never think about marketing at all.

  

  Karen Joy Fowler
  • Writing
  • Friends
  • Marketing

• My dream as an actor growing up was always to challenge myself to different genres, different roles, and it's actually rare that an actor's given that opportunity to do that.

  

  Taylor Lautner
  • Up
  • Different
  • Dream

• Believe with all your heart that you will do what you were made to do. Never for an instant harbor a doubt of it.

  

  Orison Swett Marden
  • Believe
  • Heart
  • Doubt

• I don't care about what people might call my style. It's just like when people call my music 'jangly,' 'dream,' 'oceanside,' whatever - I don't care. I'm just wearing whatever I can scrap together.

  

  Mac DeMarco
  • People
  • Music
  • Together

• I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.

  

  Vince Gill
  • Up
  • Good
  • Writing

• I think legally we have to do 'fun' with a period. I think we agreed because apparently there was another band called 'fun.' We Google-searched, which now makes sense because we're so impossible to Google-search.

  

  Nate Ruess Fun.
  • Fun
  • Think
  • Band

• Music is an art that touches the depth of human existence; an art of sounds that crosses all borders.

  

  Daniel Barenboim
  • Music
  • Art
  • Human

• I actually run a non-profit where one of the main objectives is to branch out and get a new audience for the theater. Just because the writing is so good and nothing is more effective than seeing something live and happening right in front of your face, so I definitely want to continue to pursue that.

  

  Adam Driver
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Live

• I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.

  

  E. B. White
  • Men
  • Writing
  • Man

• I hate exercising self-control.

  

  Kate Upton
  • Hate
  • Control
  • Self-Control

• 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.

  

  J. M. Coetzee
  • Writing
  • Mind
  • Heart

• Music is what our feelings sound like.

  

  Vera Farmiga
  • Music
  • Feelings
  • Sound

• The Ewoks were definitely a challenge of writing 'The Jedi Doth Return.' After having done so many things with characters who don't speak English, how was I going to make them stand out? Jedi is also rich with emotional material, particularly Darth Vader's transformation from the dark side back to the good.

  

  Ian Doescher
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Done

• I first came to Russia because of the culture, literature and music... and my interest in the 19th-century revolutionary spirit of Herzen, Bakunin and Kropotkin. Russia is a wonderful place to bring new clowns because Russians give back a wonderful response.

  

  Patch Adams
  • Music
  • Culture
  • Literature

• Because I'm so in the eye of the hurricane, I don't have a really good perception of what's happening. I'm in a room talking to people, and that's all I know. But sometimes I go out of these rooms - I live in L.A., and every now and then, maybe twice a week, I'll be somewhere, and someone will say, 'Hey, are you the guy that made Moonlight?'

  

  Barry Jenkins
  • People
  • Good
  • Live

• I was on a path that could've really led to disaster, and the one thing for me that really kept me focused and gave me something to believe in and a sense of self-worth and a discipline was music.

  

  Flea Jane's Addiction
  • Music
  • Believe
  • Path

• My father was champion of North Africa and he beat the European champ. He was very good, a professional for 12 years. We're from a big family of boxers. My father has seven brothers.

  

  Olivier Martinez
  • Good
  • Family
  • Father

• 'Deacon Blues' was special for me. It's the only time I remember mixing a record all day and, when the mix was done, feeling like I wanted to hear it over and over again. It was the comprehensive sound of the thing: the song itself, its character, the way the instruments sounded, and the way Tom Scott's tight horn arrangement fit in.

  

  Walter Becker China Crisis
  • Time
  • Done
  • Character

• When I do research, I cast my net very widely and then snatch what feels right out of that. Occasionally I'll read a specific book for a specific book, but usually I'm trying to increase my general understanding.

  

  Brandon Sanderson
  • Trying
  • Book
  • Understanding

• I like the challenge of writing music without being the coolest guy or band in the room.

  

  John Gourley Portugal. The Man
  • Music
  • Writing
  • Guy