Ariel Pink Quotes

I remember being very psyched for our first tours, despite not knowing about the endless stream of situations and setbacks that we'd face.

My music has always been my solo project.

For me, self-gratification eventually took a backseat to trying to do something collaborative with other people, to trying to make something new.

I want to stay in some era and remain there like a stupid idiot and see what happens when you try to pause time and not affect it. Not succeed. Not try to think ahead or think behind.

I love to get to that place where I don't know what kind of music I'm doing; I don't know if it's any good. I don't know if it's anything. It's a big question mark. The idea is to have interesting results. That's my bottom line.

I have a theory: I believe that with the advent of the United States and the lawful definition of marriage, it was defined as between one man and one woman. It was anti-polygamy, in effect saying no man can hoard his women.

I still have a very nonintellectual, nonjudgmental relationship with melody and the music as I hear it all in my head.

I do enjoy my solo time ... I want to stay home and do soundtracks and watch TV in my underwear with a keyboard on my lap and just be a couch potato.

I probably would never be caught wearing a baseball cap. Hats are difficult to me because they tend to be too big for my head. They don't fit right, and I feel ridiculous.

I always want to be a member in the audience, and I want to hear it from their point of view and see it from their point of view so I can know if it's good. But that's just my issues, not a real problem.

I never see songs as permanent. I'm always in a state of revising everything.

It's not illegal to be an asshole. It's not illegal to be racist, even. It's not illegal to do anything.

It's not illegal to be an asshole.

When I get to do whatever I want, I'm perfectly happy. I've found that the best scenario is that I just do what I do, and if somebody wants to be part of it, they should work as a conduit for what vision I have. They should help me complete the universe.

When a song blows your mind the first time you hear it, you don't know where it's going. It's blowing your mind as it's unfolding. Then there's that sensation that you're actually going to remember the song.

I really wanted to make the worst thing: the thing that even people who liked bad, terrible music wouldn't like - the stuff that people would ignore, always. Something really, really stupid. Something that is destined for failure.

I tried to just do things like make some money, be responsible, help out other artists who I see have had a similar path.

At 35, I'm thinking, Oh, I don't have any of that initial inspiration that I had before, all that angst. I always thought I would burn out very quickly.

And we'll dazzle them all

Confidence was never in short supply in my case. If anything, I think I overshot the mark with confidence way too early in my career, and gradually, it's about just getting more humble and wanting to sit down more.

The first half of high school, I had a girlfriend, and then the second half I got to know these guys who would just get stoned and jam. I had struck the goth thing by then, but I still thought of myself as Ian Curtis or something.

The music usually occurs to me as a complete sound, and then I have developed the skill of being able to translate that into a fully realized song.

I think about music in the way that I heard music as a kid - like, Oh my god, there's this weird rubbery ball of undulating things.

The ideal is to live forever, right? Or to live right now and just be grateful that I feel good. I'm definitely grateful for every second that I'm alive. At this point in my life, I definitely take time out throughout the day to just stop and be like, "Everything is cool." It's as good as it's gonna be, because it only gets worse.

I have lots of friends, but I'm probably a terrible friend to all of them, even my family. I wouldn't be surprised if I found myself with no friends later on in life. My friends become my enemies.

The things that keep me awake at night are things like textures and instrumentation and plotting out what things are going to do and what the sounds are that I'm trying to capture.

Do you know I used to pride myself on the fact that I'd never booked a show in my life, but that I'd played so many because I'd been invited?

If you spend the first 30 years of your life only trying to look good, you're not going to know yourself very well. If you got it, flaunt it.

I was been raised to believe I was an artist. I believed what my parents said and fulfilled it, like a prophecy.

I get to live down my reputation for being cantankerous if I slowly evolve towards being a really good live show.

I'm in Hollywood - I have no business not being in the movie industry.

I don't think I threw myself into music because I had the best intentions; it was because I was really angry.

Oh, I had my gothy phase, but I was never a troublemaker or anything like that. I was a little bit introspective, a little bit morbid. I was small for my age, so I was bullied and that kind of stuff.

I definitely don't feel a sense of jealousy or competition, and that's a really good feeling.

It's just about pushing yourself to realms that are uncharted. I love to get to that place where I don't know what kind of music I'm doing, I don't know if it's any good, I don't know if it's anything. It's a big question mark. The idea is to have interesting results. That's my bottom line. Not just a creative fantasy world or something like that, but a mood too.

I hate not understanding the words, because it kind of squashes the song. It shrinks the visual landscape that you've made for the sounds. And, all of a sudden, the content eclipses things.

I think I've been lucky enough to have had an extended adolescence. I'm a lot like I was when I was 15.

The world is full of bands and bullshit, and if I'm doing a stupid art project like rock 'n' roll then I want to spare my audience as much as possible.

I've kind of gotten more timid. I used to be fearless - at a certain point I didn't care about what anybody thought. I had all the answers and I could have been as bad as I wanted to be. But nowadays I just want to be good and make people happy.

It's really the creature of my own making from top to bottom. I appreciate that. And the good fortune, the perseverance, having the stamina to stick around longer than everyone else even after people write you off - that's always been a good motivating force in my life.

My career is a burden, but I can't just fade out like a pathetic sore loser. More often than not, I'm just making a fool of myself for the hundredth time, and that wasn't part of the plan, initially. I'd be happier not having any kind of public presence whatsoever and just hiding behind the sleeves of the CD.

You can pout about the way the world is as long as you want, but that's not going to change it. You've got to figure it out.

People should be more passive with what they consider trustworthy.

I knew what I wanted to do, which was to become a recording artist, so I definitely felt like I had a calling. The performing part was the part that I wasn't sure about.

The early pictures of me you see online, in just T-shirts and hoodies - I'm still that guy with the hoodie. But what you don't get to see in most of those pics is that I had these red clogs on that had, like, eyeballs on the ends of them that I drew on. That speaks a little bit more to what I was going after, stylistically.

I'm a product of my environment.

I'm always gonna be in opposition no matter what, but I can still cover my bases and do what I like.

I have a strong impulse to protect history and time and the lineage of events.

I've learned that I shouldn't shrink from success. Though honestly I thought they'd be knocking on my door years ago.

Talk about a struggling artist having to work against enormous odds ... But I love movies so much, so I'm going to do it.

I envisioned all these people who had been admired for having been freaks in their own time, and I saw myself in line with them.

R Stevie Moore was obviously a huge influence and is still a very big influence in my life.

When making a record, I could done a new face pretty easily and use all these different devices to hide who I am - or who I was - which really had very little to do with what I was trying to convey.

My goal is to make something special and pure, and that keeps me going, keeps me busy on the path of sobriety.

I do get credit for having a California sound to my music, but I don't think people really know what that means - they think the Beach Boys. I'm thinking more like Sunset Strip in the 1960s and stuff like that.

I don't work under the illusion that I'm the next whatever. Every time a record comes out, if it gets a good review, I'm like, "Well, one more year, guys. We bought ourselves another year."

I'm in love with Ariana Grande - she's got a very curious personality; I hear she loves Freddy Krueger, and I love Freddy Krueger, which makes me feel like we'd be perfect for each other.

During those formative times, I really didn't know what was going on, and I was sort of torn in a thousand different directions with how I felt about what I was doing.

If somebody ever says something is a mature theme, it's bound to not be. I mean, you shouldn't fall for that. You can make it sound mature, but anything that's about being mature is pretty immature.

I don't want any injustice brought against the bullies. Bullies just don't know any better. Anyone who is crying about police brutality or victimization as an adult needs to stop it and realize the privileges we have in this country.

I'm not interested in nostalgia; I'm interested in who I am.

I would die to record in space. That would be the coolest. If I got the option of, going into outer space and hanging out there for a day, and then coming back home and dying the next day, or just waiting around to see if there's any opportunity for the technology to develop so that I might experience outer space sometime in the future, I would probably take the ride today and die tomorrow. I'd be happy just hanging out between the moon and the Earth, getting a view.

As soon as you start to think of that thing that you want to convey or say, you can always just say it much better than you can actually rhyme it or stuff it into a song. It's very, very difficult to just kind of get your point across without going the back way. And you have to be good at that, to not think about things so hard. Let the pen take over, so that it's somebody else's job to dissect the lyrics and tell you what you're all about.

I had my gothy phase, but I was never a troublemaker or anything like that.

Maybe by making people feel uncomfortable, I tap into that uncanny quality that is a part of the scariest, weirdest things that you remember happening to you when you were a kid.

I couldn't imagine what it's like to be a journalist talking about music. You're left with empty descriptions; you probably have to make up a sort of weird cocktail of band influences and references to other music to get your point across.