Ryan Adams Quotes

I think it would be wrong to consider 'Ashes and Fire' a love album. The record is obsessed with time. I believe that there is a kinder view of the self on this record.

I can sort of will that stuff to happen to me if I put myself in the right headspace. Then I can actually get to a space where it won't just be one song that comes through, but a series of them.

You could eat sushi off my bookshelf. My cleaning regime is like a battleground. I'm Genghis Khan and my cleaning products are my Mongolian army and I take no prisoners. The rest of my life is an experiment in chaos so I like to keep my flat neat.

To make a song is a gift, and once it's done it keeps evolving and changing and becomes a tool to interact with other people. It's like a conversation.

Music is my thing. It's my thing; it's what I love. It's what I do. It's football to me; it's Christmas to me; religion to me; poetry to me.

Where do you go when you're lonely?
Where do you go when you're blue?
Where do you go when you're lonely?
I'll follow you
When the stars go blue.

This is going to sound crazy, but I can hear music in my head. I can imagine a piano or a guitar playing, and I can sort of think out ...

Rock records. It's the main source of inspiration for people - fans, or musicians, or both - to act out in ways that they wouldn't normally act out. Especially rock critics. Ultimately, records don't really hurt anybody, and neither do reviews.

I do craft songs, that this is designed. It's almost like the song was written to produce this desired effect. And it probably really works for somebody. It's maybe somebody's favorite tune, and it's really hard to come down on that, even if I feel a little embarrassed for it. Because some songs are written like a commercial, and that can be a little strange.

Caitlin Cary and I were always talking about X when we talked about whiskeytown, before it became an actual band. We like the concept of there being no real front person in X, yet this kind of switch up of vocals and really their sheer power, and their ability to sort of bastardise punk rock and midwetsren rock and even country into their own sound.

I think that music, or at least the kind of music that I make, benefits greatly from improvisation.

To conceive music, to execute it in front of others, to make it so others can do it ... it can be pretty humbling, and kind of scary. So yeah, I don't really feel in competition with anybody. Not because I feel elitist, but because I have enough self-competition. I'm always struggling.

I got on the phone with the president of my label and I said, "Obviously, I write songs in a lot of styles and play a lot of different kinds of music. We're getting toward the end of our business collaboration. If you could envision a record that you wanted to hear from me, what kind of record would it be?" It wasn't like asking him to fill an order, it was really just a conversation. For all the things I'd ever asked him, this was one thing I'd never asked, and I don't know why. So I was curious. And the thing that he was most interested in hearing was a solo record.

I was a nervous young man. I wanted to do so many things. And I was so enthusiastic and earnestly in love with so many things that I tried too hard. I tried really, really hard. And I made a lot of mistakes. I was afraid of a lot of stuff. And I kind of feel bad for that person I was.

A lot of my songs, they're like puzzle pieces, and there's just one way to put them together. You could, if you needed to, get the scissors out and cut up things to make them work. But I don't want to do that.

My intentions have been, and are always, to just really get behind what my ideas are musically and to just ride this thing out, cause it feels good, and I think for the most part it's good music. Even when it's not, I'd like to still search for something that could be even like a little bit mind-blowing or shocking to me.

When I'm in New York, I just want to walk down the street and feel this thing, like I'm in a movie.

There are times when I want to be plainspoken about my feelings in a song. But there are other times when it's really good to try and get my head around different kinds of song structures, or maybe I might get turned on by trying to write a song that would fit in this one scene in a movie. And by the end of all this, you just end up with a bunch of different ideas. And songs are really just ideas.

I'm sort of planting Post-It notes all over my psyche. Do not skateboard wasted. Do not buy $10,000 rugs. Be careful what you say to journalists. You don't have to stay up until 7 A.M. - tomorrow is a new day.

It's hard to be bipolar and bicoastal at the same time.

There definitely isn't a structure anymore to how I get ideas. A lot of times I'll just write down a phrase, or I'll have an idea that's attached to just a few chords. Other times, it's work.

That's why I played music; my social skills were limited. I think a lot of people that experience that pick up guitars, because they can't communicate otherwise.

When You're young, you get sad, and you get high.

I no longer know the author of this book, for simply stopping long enough and writing it down was where I changed from a boy with his eyes squeezed shut to a man with his eyes wide open so that the sunlight might reach my heart despite all that darkness.

What I love most in life happens to be the very thing that I do day-to-day, as my work. What would be my hobby, you know, happens to be my actual job. So I'm very lucky. Even if I didn't want to do as much work as I do, I'd still feel compelled to, because I so longed to be a full-time artist, and since I've been given that opportunity, I'd never want to let down the gift.

I always have to remember that I am the narrator, but it doesn't have to be about me. A lot of songwriting is about trying to use what part of me is valid in telling the story. I don't want to overcook it, you know? Sometimes it seems that's really where the work is.

Fame is an unnatural construct and those who go in search of it are the least likely to find it.

There is this strange fog of being a young man that I would refer to as soft time. Time does not go forward there. It's a series of doors that kind of wind back into one another, like a series of doors in the upper floor of a house. You revisit the same lessons over and over again, or you choose to ignore them.

I'm tired of living here in this hotel, snow and rain falling through the sheets. In fact, I'm tired of 23rd Street, strung out like some Christmas lights out there in the Chelsea night

Collaboration has become really integral to my process. I play music so that I can spend time with my friends and communicate in that way. I experience so much joy in that process, because, you know, it's those times of getting together and playing music and all that comes with it that are the best for me.

I use to be panicked, but know I'm curious!

Is it possible to love someone too much?
You bet.

For me, a record is valid when I actually hold the vinyl. Like, I've worked on the art for a while and I see the vinyl and I go "Ooh, it's an actual LP. How cool is that?" That's very sacred to me. You can't take that back, you know?

Maybe I am a jerk sometimes. Maybe I'm not. I think most people are kind of a jerk once in a while.

There is nothing wrong with loving the crap out of everything. Negative people find their walls. So never apologize for your enthusiasm. Never. Ever. Never.

It's like - I don't know, sometimes it's like chasing a pretty girl on the beach. And things I never thought I could do ... I can do.

It would be really nice to make a record that would be super-fun to play live - a record that would be funny, with a little bit of heart.

They carved your name into the stone and then
they put it in the ground,
I run my fingers through the grooves
When no one's around

If I had a reed made of lightening I could blow the sax all night ... I don't know where one would acquire a reed made of lightening but I would imagine that Bill Clinton has one.

Can you still have any famous last words if you're somebody nobody knows?

It was never my first choice to be a singer/guitar player. I really wanted to play drums.

I was never much of a bass player.

I've gotten to a place where I still love to play and sing, but I don't have any ego agenda left, outside of just wanting to stay in a creative place and play music. I much prefer to sing for somebody else, and to somebody else.

Bad nights lead to better days

A lot of the songs I write are like songs that I've never been able to find on any record, but that I've always wanted to hear. Or maybe in a style I already loved, but I was looking for something in it that I wasn't hearing yet.

They don't make coats for this kind of cold

I don't think, that all my stuff could've been records. Some, maybe. The ones that I really wanted to be records, those are the ones that are going into the box.

I'm actually a pretty upbeat person outside of playing music.

It's hard to view myself sometimes as even in the same league as other musicians, mainly because there's so much music before me. I feel overinformed by different styles and different possibilities.

Being a human being is lost. For 120 shows, the one that goes bad is the one that people will talk about.

I think that we live in a time where it's easier to be suspicious of dedicated men and women, people dedicated to their craft, because the world around them inspires them to be lazy. It inspires them to be negative. It inspires them to be snarky.

When I start working on a batch of tunes - like roughly 10 solid tunes - I always know there'll be another 10 to follow, because for every song I invest a lot of time in, there's another song waiting behind it.

The weirdest thing I've been fascinated with nowadays is the new contemporary country music, which to me sounds like very strange '70s pop, and sometimes like rock music. But some of the themes in there - maybe it's because I know how the songs were written, but it really does sound like it was written by two or three people, with the idea to appeal to the most general audience.

I have found in black metal the lyrics are profoundly beautiful ... a pathos and mythos at the same time.

I went down to Houston and I stopped in San 'Antone, I passed up the station for the bus. I was trying to find me something, but I wasn't sure just what ... man, I ended up with pockets full of dust.

Writing and creating, those things come to me on their own. I feel like ... you sort of summon them and it's like allowing the universe to enter your heart in an entirely different way to what it normally does. It's like inviting that energy of the universe to enter into your craft in a way where it has a meaning.

Forever only takes its toll on some

There's all these musicians in the world, and anybody that takes enough time to create a record or even think about the fantasy of rock & roll, it's a vulnerable place to be in, it's a huge thing to do.