Broken Social Scene Quotes
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Being alive and understanding that and making the decision to actually live take a lot of courage.
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It's very hard for me to say "Do I have favorite?" because I find that each song represents a different sounds different emotions in Andy's [Kim] life. Particularly "Sister OK", 'cos that started everything.
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People don't get that being a musician is a job, they don't get what the work takes. And that's just because you're living a dream, so everyone who's observing it from the outside can't really empathize with how much work it is because you're fortunate. And it's a kind of competition with yourself to stay away from all of the excess, whether it's booze or drugs or just the late nights with the addiction to watching the sun rise in some weird part of the world. But when you meet the other musicians, there's generally a spiritual exhaustion that you connect with.
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Certain audiences get the double meaning and some of the references and ironies, but there's definitely been shows where I feel like I'm not doing it well enough for it to come across as anything other than "oh, she's hot and she's dancing."
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When I see friends of mine break up and they're like, "Oh, we still really love each other, but we just couldn't make it work," I don't get that. I don't understand what that means. Make it work.
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This is the thing I've noticed is that the greater the distance between you and any ordinary task is the measurement of how much rockstar potential you have.
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I got a little lost in "Law & Order" and "Luther" and all those shows where it's basically women dying all the time, I had to stop watching that stuff because it fills me with anxiety. And I joined a gym.
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Everybody has their own ways of wanting to do things.
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There's nothing better than striving to be a better man.
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Your obstacles define your achievements, and without those obstacles, you're just another bland nothing.
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I think you have to make concessions in life. One of the most frustrating things about getting older is [you realize] the reason you have a plan is so you can see everything that it isn't. The plan never works. Something happens and you adjust to it and you adapt to it and you accept it and you keep going, but that's not the plan.
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I have an identity crisis which is not resolved because I'm a dual citizen. My whole family is American, and I was born in India but I was raised in Canada.
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People are terrible. They do terrible things to each other, they hurt each other, they lie, they're vain, they're shallow, they're violent ... but they're all we have.
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For all of my life, I've had this one song in my head, and I'm still trying to write it. I'm still trying to get that song out. I'm getting closer, every record I get a little bit closer to saying it the way I want to say it.
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I am really inspired by writers, and weirdly - respect music journalists, which I think makes me the exception amongst most musicians. I think it's a craft. I think it's been really neglected - sadly. I think about the days of the great legendary rock critics. Who's going to become that when magazines and newspapers don't pay anyone properly or don't seem to respect the history or research that is required?
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I try not to focus on the gender issue too much but I think you have to acknowledge it in order for it to go away.
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I had never really written songs for anyone before. With [Broken] Social Scene, you're writing songs for others and your passing them around and exchanging things, but for a man who has the history that Andy Kim had, and has lived the life that he's had, you see such a youthful aspect of how he just wanted to create something again.
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You're not going out there to make a living out of it by selling records. You want acclaim and you want to know people are listening.
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I think if you listen to our records, they come at different points in your life. When people say to me that Stars records have themes, I think what they mean is we write songs - or try to write songs - that are timeless. We try to write songs that catch you at the right time in your life, and that you can hold on to. We write kitchen sink songs. If you're doing the dishes or you're driving to your mom's funeral, or if you're getting over having done MDMA and you feel sad, you can listen to Stars because we're not going to demand of you that you be cool.
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You know and I know that as soon as it's done, you have to get it out there. You want what's best for it. And especially in owning a label, which some days is the greatest thing for me and in some days is my demise because you see the truth and the work that goes into things and you see things happen and you see things not happen, and all you want in this world of currency right now is popularity, that's it!
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What inspires me is anxiety and the quest to try to change things in my life. ...I got addicted to endings and beginnings and to the idea of always moving around. ...Obviously, whenever you're going through something that's the best time to create, if you're going through something amazing, or horrible, or nothing at all you should be creating. Unfortunately the songwriters of today generally torture themselves to make sure they're writing good songs and take it a little too seriously.
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As an artist, expectations are basically your enemy. If you're truly making something to make it, then you're not thinking about anything else except what you're making.
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What would I say about "Heaven Without a Gun"? For me, to have this man, and our friendship [ with Andy Kim] grew really slowly and very consistently throughout the years before we decided to get into a studio together, I wasn't sure if he wanted to do songs that were pre-written or what. We didn't know what we were getting into.
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Acknowledging that we lose is the overarching theme in everything in Stars. To me, that's what punk means. Stars is a punk band because we acknowledge loss. We're not trying to win. We're not trying to project victory. You win alone. I'm not interested in singing for the one winner in the room; I'm interested in singing for all of the losers in the room.