Julian Casablancas Quotes

The British press can be so annoying. They jerk you off with one hand and smack you with the other.

My parents separated when I was eight. I grew up with my mom alone.

We're so quick to point out our own flaws in others.

I'm always writing something. I've got so much stuff, I don't know what to do with it. Some of it will be Strokes, some of it will be I don't know what - stuff for pop singers. TV themes. I've got a jar stuffed with songs, all these ideas that are just me humming into a recording device.

Compared to people in Africa, I think we've all had privileged upbringings.

I would prefer it if people thought that I didn't work hard, that I just played the guitar for three minutes a week and was like, 'Check out this song - what do you think?' That would be ideal. I would prefer telling people that I'm just truly talented.

You know some of the people in The Strokes, yeah, their parents had success - but we didn't live like yuppies.

The artistic element of Manhattan has kind of moved to Brooklyn. Has it changed it? Yeah. Has it ruined it? I would say no. It is what it is. I say better that than an urban war zone.

I kinda like messing with perception a little bit. Kind of what drugs do sometimes, and drinking. I mean, you know, you mess with your mind a little bit to see life from different angles. Within reason, if you can handle it.

The problem with touring isn't the traveling and the shows, it's the vegetal state you get into.

I'm just going to try and be a good dad and not spoil the kid: give him love and encouragement but also discipline. Me and my woman, we don't want him to feel too entitled.

I'm happy to feed the illusion that I'm a lazy recluse.

I want to be one of those people, be they writers, poets, musicians, who leaves clues for the next generation. The really good people leave clues that help feed the human race. That's my aspiration.

Kids are always honest, 'cause they don't think they're ever going to die.

It's that feeling when you hear your favourite song. That feeling, whether you're in a car, at a party or alone at home or in bed and you hear this song and it just hits you so strong - that's what we aim for.

I don't shake at the site of alcohol anymore. I don't feel the need for it. If anything I'll get stoned. I always told myself if it got to the point that it was affecting my songwriting and music that I'd stop. And it did get to the point.

I see myself out of my own eyes, which means I have no idea what's going on the other way around. I just think I try to be a good person - and I fail.

It's like an inner struggle for me, between saying I don't give a **** and trying to make it work. You want to do the right thing, but I'm sick of people thinking I'm difficult.

There are so many little places I want to play, sometimes weird places I think would be fun to play ... a bar that's half full.

That it's a lot harder to make a keyboard sound not-cheesy than a guitar.

The best artists are the ones that work the hardest, and if you work hard enough, you'll eventually experience the happy accidents that are art.

No matter who I'm talking to, I always talk like I'm doing an interview.

I feel slightly confused about certain things. Practical and tactical things. When you try to make everyone happy ... in the end you've got to make yourself happy.

If you're in a bar and a certain song comes on and the vibe is just different, it evokes the kinds of things that you want to feel, and if music can do that it's a very special thing.

L.A. is a vortex. The weather there tricks you into thinking you're on vacation, even when you're working fourteen hours a day.

If it doesn't start with you, it dies with you.

I very often have night terrors. Just think of the worst possible situation, and it's a regular thing for me. I've died in my sleep twenty-three different ways.

If the choice is between doing something supercool and having no one hear it and doing something equally cool and tricking people into putting it on the radio, I don't think the second option is some big sellout.

A band is a great way to destroy a friendship, and a tour's a great way to destroy a band.

L.A.'s kind of, like, seven really cool towns. It's so laid-back. If you go in the right spot, you can walk around, and you don't need a car.

Whenever I go to shows, I end up looking at what shoes the guy onstage is wearing and the jacket he's got on. And when you know everything's gonna be under scrutiny, it makes you feel more comfortable if you have cool stuff.

One of the big songwriting things for me has always been: always think what you do sucks. Because the second you stop believing that, you suck. And that's a fact.

For a long time I didn't want to do a solo thing, but there comes a point where everyone else is going outside of The Strokes and The Strokes filtering process.

Songwriting is hard - it's so easy to fall into the same traps. It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.

I think a lot of people study the rules too much and then don't know how to be creative.

I am a fan of 'SNL' and a big Jimmy Fallon fan, too.

Can our mind evolve to be something other than an extension of our animal needs?

Working on music is the funnest thing for me, and I love it, and I could do it all day, all night.

Now, the good of business is put above anything else, as corporations have become the new ruling body. Most decisions seem to be made like ones of a medieval king: whatever makes profit while ignoring and repressing the truth about whatever suffering it may cause (like pop music, for that matter).

Doing heroin is like walking around with a terrorist as your friend. It's like taking a terrorist around to parties You never know when it's going to blow up on you.

In most cultures, you can have a kid at 18 and it's not a big thing. It's not like, 'Oh, you've got to get a different haircut and move to the suburbs and act, like, 35.'

I'd like to just get to a point where maybe we can say something that will be matterful. That's definitely not a word, by the way.

It was 100,000 years before we figured out what to do with fire. Imagine cavemen, sitting in front of a fire, eating raw meat for 100 thousand years.

Don't you dare get to the top and not know what to do.

Sometimes I've sat outside, not to tan, but as a result of that I ended up tanning slightly.

It find it funny how people from Boston and New York hate each other because of pro teams.

I always reference 'Mad Max' when I think about what I want to wear. But it's a fine line between that and 'Edward Scissorhands'.

New York is in my soul.

I have to say, I'm good with gifts. If I find something perfect for a certain person, I'll just get it and put it away in a kind of nook under my bed - a little gift hutch, if you prefer.

A band is a good way to break up a friendship.

I think all of Manhattan has pretty much become a bar-slash-nightclub-slash-restaurant. There were always pockets of that. But now every corner of Manhattan is that.

Vanity can easily overtake wisdom. It usually overtakes common sense.

Art is the image of life, it's purpose simply to enhance it.

Religion is never the problem; it's the people who use it to gain power.

Desire is individual. Happiness is common.

I find it funny how people from Boston and New York hate each other because of pro teams. But, like, everyone on the Red Sox is a random millionaire athlete from somewhere else.

I think I used to do everything and then people had a problem with that within the band, so we're doing more of a communal thing.

Birth is a beautiful thing.

A tour is the most intense, stimulating way to hear music; it's the best form to receive it. There's genuine excitement from people. I feel like we've stepped up a level.