The Birthday Party Quotes
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Being a parent can make you a horrible person at times, because you're pushed to the limit constantly.
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If you look around, complacency is the great disease of your autumn years, and I work hard to prevent that.
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What I think about when I frequent the Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan [Museum of Art], and I look at these artifacts that are taken out of context and how we're forced to view them as objects, as relics, as sculpture- static. But what's interesting is what it allows me to do in my head in terms of imagining what the possibilities are or imagining the role in which they played within a particular culture which I'm fascinated by.
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I just want to leave this world with a massive catalog of songs.
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I don't believe in an interventionist God...
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I'm hugely self-critical in the morning.
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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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Well, as anyone who actually writes knows, if you sit down and are prepared, then the ideas come. There's a lot of different ways people explain that, but, you know, I find that if I sit down and I prepare myself, generally things get done.
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As Australians, we see the law as inherently bad. We have a real inherent distaste for authority in our makeup.
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It was about the preciousness of that, and how they viewed those birds as art, as something valuable. I didn't care one way or another back then, but now, thinking about my grandparents - who are still alive but getting older - I see the birds as sort of time capsules. Now I go home during the holidays and they hold a lot of weight in terms of nostalgia and memory. Now they mean everything.
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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.
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There are times when I think I can sing it better, but usually I find that I can't.
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Film seems to be a medium designed for betrayal and violence.
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Everybody tends to overplay live. That's just the nature of playing live. And that can be great, but it can also kill something that's special, and intimate, about a recorded version of a song. You find out very quickly which songs you can play, and which songs you do damage to by playing them live.
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God is in everything whether I'm mentioning him or not.
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An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany.
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The more settled I've become, the more problematic my characters have become. There was a period when I wrote sensitive and gentle songs and these came at a time when life was at its most destructive. I think you write about what you need, on some level.
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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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The blues is instilled in every musical cell that floats around your body.
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There's an element to songwriting that I can't explain, that comes from somewhere else. I can't explain that dividing line between nothing and something that happens within a song, where you have absolutely nothing, and then suddenly you have something. It's like the origin of the universe.
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I'm a big fan of teatowels and am always on the lookout for a good one.
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When you've been initiated, you can stand in the world differently. And I think it is up to all of us, we can have cheerleaders, we can have supporters, but it comes down to us as individuals, how do we now proceed? Do we have the tools to proceed?
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It's an Australian thing to be dismissive. We find that endearing. Americans don't. They believe what you say.
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I think it's an essential fact for any performer or artist to fail as poignantly as they can succeed.