The Birthday Party Quotes
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Some people, myself in particular, have an adversarial relationship with the camera, and it sprouts up in every photograph.
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You know, an idea is just an idea. There seems to... the kind of epiphanies that you have, like the little sudden bursts of light, they're very small and they're very short and it's the pursuit of the idea that's the important thing. . . . I know a lot of people who have way better ideas than I do that-much more frequently than I do that just can't sit down and actually do it. Ideas are such are a little overrated really; it's the work behind the idea that's the important thing.
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If you're Australian, you feel it in your bones because you're at odds with everybody else, except other Australians, in the sense that people always seem to be behaving strangely. People always seem to be behaving the wrong way, in a different way. You say things and there are silences.
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After a while, you just don't do things you don't wanna do - that's the great freedom you get, the older you get. You learn what to do and what not to do, and what will be a waste of time and what won't be a waste of time.
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Musicians are at the bottom of the creative pyramid and authors are at the top, and many people think it's unacceptable for someone to attempt to jump from the bottom to the top of the pyramid.
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The artistic process seems to be mythologized quite a lot into something far greater than it actually is. It is just hard labor.
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Outside the world of politics, one person in the world of the arts I would mention as an influence is Nick Cave, another person who has been around since the late 1970s. He has developed and changed remarkably, whilst remaining true to his vision. He has been a great help to me as well, without his knowing it.
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As people buy less and less records, it's become more and more important for me to spend more and more on them - to lavish that much more attention on them. The Bad Seeds were always quite protective and old school, but Grinderman has opened us up to do anything and be shameless. We're not so precious about it.
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My records are basically a litany of complaints against the world, and I'm quite like that in real life as well.
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I'm not religious, and I'm not a Christian, but I do reserve the right to believe in the possibility of a god.
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Oh, a passing, skeptical kind of interest. I'm a hammer-and-nails kind of guy.
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I'm hugely self-critical in the morning.
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The way people reacted to me in dressing rooms and so on was incredibly aggressive. They know every record and they seem to think they should nudge me or bump into me as they go past. It was this incredible performance that used to amuse me. In the early days, people were drawn towards us like they'd be drawn towards a car smash...There is a definite relationship between that fanaticism and the fan that, as a performer, you expose more of yourself, of the undercurrents of your personality. Most rock personalities subdue that or choose not to explore it.
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My responsibility as an artist is to turn up at the page or the piano or the microphone. The rest is up to God.
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God is in everything whether I'm mentioning him or not.
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I don't particularly believe all love is doomed. But I guess, one is usually kinda suffering from some aborted love affair or association, rather than being at the peak of one. I think it's fairly obvious that a lot more suffering goes on in the name of love than the little happiness you can squeeze out of it.
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I don't feel I'm thrown around by the winds of taste and fashion.`
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Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can.
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I feel like I've spent the last five years of my life on the road. It hasn't affected my songs but it's probably affected everything else about me. Obviously, the more you travel, the wilder the things that keep happening to you, the more likely it is you'll get complete strangers knocking on your hotel room door.
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I have to be able to pull you in. How can I diversify my audiences? What role do I have to play to be part of that shift? I have to take that seriously.
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I think it's an essential fact for any performer or artist to fail as poignantly as they can succeed.
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I love performing. I can get to be that person I always wanted to be - godlike.
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I don't write happy songs. Who does? I don't know anybody who writes happy songs, really.
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I used to believe that if I could do certain things - write a book or be a successful musician - that I'd be transformed into a happy person, but it doesn't work that way.