Colin Hay Quotes

You don't want to get worse at something.

The Men at Work thing is always there, it's always going to be there. It's not something I consciously think that much about anymore. The thing that stays with you is the songs, which is a good thing for me, because the songs are the things that stand the test of time.

I can't remember too much about the '80s, to be honest with you ... I wish that weren't true, but it is.

I tried talking to Jesus, but he just put me on hold ...

I play in a lot of empty rooms.

I feel pretty comfortable in a lot of different musical styles. I like rhythm, and I like melody and so forth.

I had a very erratic career. I got very famous for a minute and then it just all went away, you know?

I don't think I'm going to change jobs at this point.

In Scotland, beautiful as it is, it was always raining. Even when it wasn't raining, it was about to rain, or had just rained. It's a very angry sky.

I like the process of writing songs. It makes me feel good.

It strikes me there's a bunch of people in power who have really strong intentions of running the world and adjusting the world to exactly how they see it.

I love going up the West Coast of the U. S. because it's one of my favorite parts of the world to tour.

I just found over the years that it's very hard to change people's perception of what it is that you do.

I'd love to have a hit record. I don't believe anyone that says they wouldn't like that.

I do like writing songs in a band. When it's rock, it's such a different kind of dynamic, obviously.

I like to let the songs speak so that they can go through some kind of rebirth as you play them.

I sit around and play acoustic guitar - usually acoustic, sometimes electric, occasionally piano, but more often guitar, just trying to come up with tunes. Ideas kind of pop into your head.

People say history is boring, and that is true because people are boring. We haven't changed since time began. We're still the same. We've obviously made some changes. When we started, it was all about food, clothing and shelter. Now we watch 'Top Chef', 'Project Runway', and 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.'

As you get older you don't want to just do the same thing, otherwise there's not much point. I think it's more or less trying to write things that, perhaps, say more by doing
less, or you're always trying to refine things, make things a little simpler, a little more essential.

Sometimes there's a general arc that you want to try and get better the longer you do something.

I don't walk off and come back for encores. I figure I can add four weeks to my life that way.

I got very famous for a minute and then it just all went away, you know? And for the last 20 years - you've got to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and then go on your merry way and start again, in a sense, and that's what I've been doing.

I tend to write, either myself, or I sometimes write with a co-writer, my friend that lives up the road. It's usually a relatively solitary thing, but I do like coming up with ideas.