The Birthday Party Quotes
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One thing that I'm really interested in is the kind of esoteric detail that surrounds these great figures. And Wikipedia is full of that kind of stuff, whether it's true or untrue. It staggers me: why, in the short space assigned to a person or an event, that kind of random information is there. To be honest, that's wonderful fuel for songwriting.
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Love songs come in many guises and are seemingly written for many reasons – as declarations or to wound – I have written songs for all of these reasons – but ultimately the love songs exist to fill, with language, the silence between ourselves and God, to decrease the distance between the temporal and the divine.
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Who knows their own story? It certainly makes no sense when you’re in the middle of it...
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A is for Answering all your prayers, N is for kNowing that your loverman's going to be the answer.
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I get criticized for a lot of what I write about, but as far as I'm concerned I'm actually standing up and having a look at what goes on in the minds of men, and I have the authority to talk about it because I'm a man.
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There's that kind of song, "Whoah baby, I love you," which doesn't have a visual element, but a very strong emotional element, and these are the great songs to me - those ones that you put them on and they just make you feel great, or whatever.
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And I kissed away a thousand tears My lady of the Various Sorrows Some begged, some borrowed, some stolen Some kept safe for tomorrow.
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I'm a kind of hard-wired pessimist. I can't help but see the world in a certain kind of way.
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I'm very happy to hear that my work inspires writers and painters. It's the most beautiful compliment, the greatest reward. Art should always be an exchange.
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The band is a living, breathing thing. It grows in the same way we do as human beings and if it doesn't, it dies. It's important to feed the organism, and one way of doing that is to set musical challenges that keep it alive.
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I've got some words of wisdom.
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Despite what people might think, I'm not interested in being dark all the time. I'm actually searching for some kind of light, and I'm always very happy when I can achieve that.
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I have to be able to see the thing that's going on that I'm writing about, or else it just doesn't make any sense to me.
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Brother, be a brother, fill this tiny cup of mine. And please, sir, make it whiskey: I have no head for wine!
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When I start to write a song, I initially fall into patterns and creative habits that are familiar, and because they're familiar, they sound convincing. It's important for me to not pursue those ideas, because I've already done them, but to find ideas that are different and feel strange to write and disconcerting to write.
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It's a wonderful life if you can find it.
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My muse is my wife. It's not some vague thing that flutters around the astrosphere or wherever it is. Sometimes as a songwriter you need something to hang a song on, to give it some kind of presence and form. For me, Susie is that.
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The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.
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I'm not a misogynist, so you can dispense with that. I think I've done wonders for the feminist movement.
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I still feel very much an imposter in the whole music scene, which I'm quite happy about to be honest.
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Not my biggest fear, but my biggest problem onstage is over-emphasizing what I do. I'm pushing too hard. You need to engage an audience. They need to be able to involve their own imaginations as well. They don't need everything thrust down their throat, and I have a tendency to do that. I always have had a tendency to do that.
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I'm unable to really write the kind of song that doesn't have a visual element, which most songs don't.
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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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I've had to try and find a way over the years of writing narratively that doesn't really require you to sit down and work out what the story's about. You're brought into a sort of sequence of images that have that emotional resonance, but it's kind of irrelevant what the actual story is. It's taken me maybe 13 albums or something to work that out.