John Darnielle Quotes

I always worry that I'm a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don't have exhaustive knowledge of much. ~ John Darnielle

For years, I've written narrators who aren't gender-identified. When I do autobiographical stuff, that's different, obviously. But I've always tried to keep my songs as potentially not a man's thing. ~ John Darnielle

It's hard to overstate how deep the need can get for things to make sense. ~ John Darnielle

I have remade myself; or I am no one, driving a delivery van carrying boxes of electronics from nowhere to no place, the road empty before me by day, shared by headless headlights after dark, beams increasing briefly and then gone, beyond, somewhere off in the cross-traffic, catchable in the rearview if I dare. I thrive. I fail to thrive. I fall. I rise. Too many. Too late. Not that, not those, not these: this. ~ John Darnielle

My capacity for vanishing into whatever shadows happen to be around is a hard-won and precious skill. ~ John Darnielle

A player's first move isn't necessarily the truest or clearest view of that person I'll get, but it's often the most naked, because it takes a while to situate yourself within an imaginary landscape. When you respond to the initial subscriber packet with your opening move - when you come to the bridge - you haven't had a chance to get much sense of the game's rhythms, so you're awkward, halting, more likely to overplay your hand. The open path at the overpass gives way to grand schemes, huge, multipart responses, whole narratives from within the canvas newly forming inside the player's imagination. I keep myself out of it; I interpret and react, like a flowchart responding flatly to a person who's asking it how to live. ~ John Darnielle

Everyone in my orbit would have a terrible day: the arbiter of days has decreed it. ~ John Darnielle

I think it's a misconception that metal's about anger, obviously. ~ John Darnielle

You always feel like your 18-year-old self in some sense. And that's what walking through New York on a June evening feels like - you feel like it's Friday, and you're 17 years old. ~ John Darnielle

The age of empire had entered into the first gasps of its terminal phase. ~ John Darnielle

Back in the '90s, if you did mail order in music, you could make a good living doing it if you could hustle. ~ John Darnielle

I start writing, pull whatever images happen to occur to me and make up a story, instead of starting with details that are real and I know of and going from there. ~ John Darnielle

It's not that nobody ever gets away: that's not true. It's that you carry it with you. It doesn't matter that the days roll on like hills too low to give names to; they might be of use later, so you keep them. You replay them to keep their memory alive. It feels worthwhile because it is. ~ John Darnielle

But people underestimate just how starved everybody is for some magic pathway back into childhood. ~ John Darnielle

As an artist, you always have to be growing. You don't just want to do what you already know people like. ~ John Darnielle

It is hard to leave home, and sometimes it takes a long time. * ~ John Darnielle

I am heavy in his arms, and I feel safe there, but I am lost, and I need constantly to be shoring up the wall that holds my emotions at bay, or I will feel something too great to contain. ~ John Darnielle

When you punish a person for dreaming his dream
Don't expect him to thank or forgive you. ~ John Darnielle

My songs tend to sprint toward some epiphany and then explode. ~ John Darnielle

In video games you sometimes run into what they call a side quest, and if you don't manage to figure it out you can usually just go back into the normal world of the game and continue on toward your objective. I felt like I couldn't find my way back to the world now: like I was somebody locked in a meaningless side quest, in a stuck screen. ~ John Darnielle

I don't like to say, "Oh, I don't like this kind of music." I like to listen to it and try to see what people who like it get out of it. ~ John Darnielle

I write stuff down. I have a chalkboard in the kitchen where I will scrawl stuff down if I have a faint outline of an idea. And I'll go into my office or whatever. But that goes from format to format. ~ John Darnielle

I come from Chino, so all your threats are empty. ~ John Darnielle

I'm sort of a cavedweller: I miss my house, my yard, my kitchen, my wife. The trees. When I get home, I like to get down into my office neighborhood as soon as I can. ~ John Darnielle

A band's first album's usually not great. When you made the first album, you had a day job and you were still trying to be serious about it. ~ John Darnielle

More and more, I enjoy hearing people who are good at their instruments and who've found a distinctive voice. In death metal, a lot of guys are Eddie Van Halen disciples, but they take his style to really expressionistic places. It's a real pleasure for me to hear people pushing their craft. ~ John Darnielle

Something I've learned being in this industry for so long is that if you want to work with somebody, call them up. Very few musicians have any illusions about genre boundaries. They are useful descriptive terms, but they don't really bind musicians. ~ John Darnielle

I grew up around some people whose parents toured a lot: tough on the marriage, tough on the kids. ~ John Darnielle

I am a person of high energy. That, and I sit down and I write when I get an idea - I put other things aside. ~ John Darnielle

A Cat Stevens record isn't just Cat Stevens' ideas. It's Cat Stevens and all the musicians who play with Cat Stevens, right? ~ John Darnielle

Sean at sixteen thought 'Rexecutioner's Dream' was the greatest thing he'd ever heard, something so strange and different it seemed like a message from another realm. It had cover art, but the art was glued onto the inner sleeve of a standard-issue black cassette; the spine was hand lettered. It was the product of someone's hard work, a vision brought into the world of real things. A dream disguised in a crude, plain package. ~ John Darnielle

It's in the nature of the landscape to change, and it's in the nature of people to help the process along... ~ John Darnielle

The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it's you, and that you're standing in the doorway. ~ John Darnielle

Life is entirely unthinkable without any of the creative arts, and they're all a continuum - the force in question is creativity, not its mode of expression. ~ John Darnielle

There is no identifiable accent here unless you've cultivated a very careful ear. This is an easy place to live, milder in feel than Nebraska to the west, negligibly warmer in the winter than Minnesota to the north, of less imagined consequence to the world than Illinois to the east or Missouri to the south. ~ John Darnielle

To the left, just past the painting, on the other side of the hall, is the bathroom, the sort of open door that if cameras found it as they passed through the house in a horror movie would trigger a blast of synthesizers. ~ John Darnielle

I don't write my own publicity materials, I just read 'em and give 'em the OK. ~ John Darnielle

People like to say how much they like stuff, but with 'The Sunset Tree,' people shared stories about what it meant for them. And that stuff's so humbling and amazing. ~ John Darnielle

There are only two stories: either you go forward or you die. ~ John Darnielle

I used to break three or four strings a night, and the show would be over because I didn't know how to change the strings. ~ John Darnielle

I still get really excited looking at stuff that I've seen every day for 20 years. ~ John Darnielle

It's hard to stay positive when there's a lot of evil in the world. ~ John Darnielle

It's not my style to be thinking about what a record is while I'm making it: I just write songs. ~ John Darnielle

Wolf in White Van is beautiful, enigmatic, and sad, and like every other brilliant thing John Darnielle has ever done, it seems to come from some fully imagined universe, of which we only get to see this haunting, enticing sliver. I utterly love it. ~ J. Robert Lennon

I know the Bible pretty well. I'm not one of those guys who can immediately start quoting every book, but usually I know where to look to find certain themes. ~ John Darnielle

Once you start talking to people, you find out there's a lot more wrestling fans than you think there are. ~ John Darnielle

The fact that somebody's telling you a story about people who didn't exist doesn't make the experience of the story any less real in your heart and mind. ~ John Darnielle

I don't celebrate milestones and I don't do anniversary editions. It's not my style to reflect on accomplishments. ~ John Darnielle

There's the dual challenge of wanting to speak from an authentic place, and then being able to be honest about it. Even in the most mannered art, I think that's what people value, is a voice that comes from a real place. ~ John Darnielle

My strongest hope is for a cameo as a band playing in a club visited by the detectives on 'Law & Order: SVU' during the course of an investigation, maybe during sound check, or something, so they can force us to stop playing while they question the sound guy. ~ John Darnielle

Wrestling is like any form of drama or pretty much any form of entertainment - some people understand this about forms of entertainment really intuitively when they're younger, and others would have to be really not very intelligent for a long time until we realize that every human mood is an art. ~ John Darnielle

If my songs are being listened to between any other songs, that is awesome, and I'm glad people are getting something out of them. ~ John Darnielle

The better I get at writing songs, the harder it seems to be to relate to people. But when I get on stage, I'm extremely happy. ~ John Darnielle

I just started writing stuff to kill time on summer evenings. This is why I'm always telling people who ask me what they need to do to succeed to give up, do something else. ~ John Darnielle

For me, moving is always a big opportunity. It's just a enough of a shift in outlook that every time I move, it seems to open something up. ~ John Darnielle

To me, creative work is labor, like any other kind of labor. It's got value, and it takes your time, and it's useful to people, depending. ~ John Darnielle

If you show up to work five days in a row, nobody's going to pat you on the back - everyone does that. Well, do that with your writing. Just show up. Be there for it. When you get an idea, write it down somewhere and then be a steward of that idea. ~ John Darnielle

When the last days come
We shall see visions
More vivid than sunsets
Brighter than stars
We will recognize each other
And see ourselves for the first time
The way we really are ~ John Darnielle

Who knows the secrets of anybody's heart. ~ John Darnielle

People think of me as a nice person because, I think, I have grown into a nice person. ~ John Darnielle

And then I went back into my room, locked into a sequence as perfect as a pattern, and I sat down on my great rock throne, invisible to the outside world but palpable beneath me, and from how my face felt I thought maybe I was crying, either because I didn't want to do this or because I did, it was hard to tell and anyway I never would, who would believe me in either case and who would be there to believe me in all cases, it was a puzzle, I had yet to learn the way of the jigsaw, and so I positioned the rifle beneath my chin, it feels cold, like an actual thing in the actual present physical world, OK, there it is, I am here now, and then I lay down on my belly and listened to the rising squall beyond the door. ~ John Darnielle

You get this really cool groove when you're playing just piano, bass, and drums where everyone's sort of feeling each other's space, which is the only way to put it, but it really is true, and everyone's sort of sitting in their own pocket. It's kind of jazz-like. ~ John Darnielle

This is why people cry at the movies: because everybody's doomed. No one in a movie can help themselves in any way. Their fate has already staked its claim on them from the moment they appear onscreen. ~ John Darnielle

I think youth will always be connected to the strongest music at the time because ... I don't want to use the word 'tribal,' but there was this sort of familial affiliation that people would feel with the music they were listening to. ~ John Darnielle

People want you to play the songs they know. I try not to reflect too much, and I don't really like to focus too much on myself. ~ John Darnielle

I thought about the guy in the truck, the focus in his expression, and I felt like I already knew enough of the story to tell it to somebody else maybe better than either of its major players could. ~ John Darnielle

When I'm writing a song, I'm just making stuff up as I go along. ~ John Darnielle

Their boots were black and shiny and your treasures gleamed like stars,
Bones from deep down in the fertile crescent. ~ John Darnielle

For me, fiction isn't very cathartic. It can be a broad, long catharsis, but it's a whole different thing - whereas music is physical. Essentially, it goes in through your ear. Fiction is cerebral, necessarily. It can do emotional stuff. But they don't really compare - not for me. ~ John Darnielle

I think all writing is necessarily autobiographical to a greater or lesser extent, and the less it tries to be confessional, the more likely it is that you're somehow sneaking the things you need to say in there. ~ John Darnielle

The only people who are afraid of file sharing are the people whose albums are so dull presentation-wise that nobody cares about owning the actual finished product, and the people who have so little connection to their listeners that said listeners have no reason to care whether the artists they like are getting reimbursed for their efforts. ~ John Darnielle

There is something fierce and starved about first ideas. ~ John Darnielle

Literature is a mystical place for me. It's not dry. It's where miracles happen. ~ John Darnielle

The more I learn about stuff the more conscious I become of grave gaps in my knowledge. ~ John Darnielle

Your intelligence doesn't override your desire to destroy yourself. ~ John Darnielle

It usually happens that I have multiple different projects going on at once, and one can be referencing the other. ~ John Darnielle

Books are like rocks. You hold one in your hand and look at it in various lights to get a sense of it, and then when you get a good angle, you throw it through a window to see what happens. ~ John Darnielle

One way you can get really close to God is to sin as hard as you can. ~ John Darnielle

In wrestling, people just throw each other around, possibly actually bleed, and are still friends in the locker room afterwards. But there's a real glee - a feeling goes up in the arena, especially on non-TV days. If it's just people in a room and somebody starts to bleed, that's very exciting. ~ John Darnielle

But at that moment all I could see was the wolf in the white van, so alive, so strong. Hidden from view, unnoticed, concealed. And I thought, maybe he's real, this wolf, and he's really out there in a white van somewhere, riding around. Maybe he's in the far back, pacing back and forth, circling, the pads of his huge paws raw and cracking, his thick, sharp claws dully clicking against the raised rusty steel track ridges on the floor. Maybe he's sound asleep, or maybe he's just pretending. And then the van stops somewhere, maybe, and somebody gets out and walks around the side to the back and grabs hold of the handle and flings the doors open wide. Maybe whoever's kept him wears a mechanic's jumpsuit and some sunglasses, and he hasn't fed the great wolf for weeks, cruising the streets of the city at night, and the wolf's crazy with hunger now; he can't even think. Maybe he's not locked up in the back at all: he could be riding in the passenger seat, like a dog, just sitting and staring out the open window, looking around, checking everybody out. Maybe he's over in the other seat behind the steering wheel. Maybe he's driving. ~ John Darnielle

I hope I get to watch porn with you, Abs?" he said, eyebrows up. "Am I hearing this right? I just want to make sure I understand what it is you imagine I'm thinking." She ~ John Darnielle

Sometimes I'll write without the guitar or the piano, but most of the time I'll be playing and just improvising some words. And when I get something that sounds good, a line with a story in it, I'll try and tease it out and figure out where the story is going. ~ John Darnielle

I want to make sure people know I don't think I have any magic powers. I just have a story that I share. ~ John Darnielle

I'm kind of a hermit. Left to my own devices, I won't submerge myself in anything further afield than the driveway. ~ John Darnielle

I know there must be other navigable paths where either nothing happens, that night or later, or where, when the idea to just pull the curtain on most things and then on everything, just because crosses my mind, I let the moment pass, and I go to sleep like everyone else did on my street that night. ~ John Darnielle

I think I am a religious person just by nature. I think I sort of view everything through the lens of some inner undying thing in people that drives them to act as they do or to feel ashamed of not acting in some other way. ~ John Darnielle

My son, who sees me almost every day of his life, will look at me and go, "I know that dude! I like that dude!" It's incredibly affirming. ~ John Darnielle

There are new monsters now. ~ John Darnielle

I hang out and sign records for an hour or two hours every night, and I like to hear as many people's stories as I can, because if somebody wants to share their story with me, I want to honor that. ~ John Darnielle

I enjoy hearing people who are good at their instruments and who've found a distinctive voice. ~ John Darnielle

One of the great things about wrestling is how it interrogates this silly idea that you have one authentic self. ~ John Darnielle

There are so many ways to respond to music besides feeling like someone's communicating with you. It gives me a charge. ~ John Darnielle

I got a promo of 'Nichts Muss' in what would have been 2002 or 2003 and fell totally in love with it after listening to it on an airplane that took me to Australia via Taipei and Kuala Lumpur. ~ John Darnielle

Working efficiently while a movie played was second nature to her by now, more comfortable than silence. ~ John Darnielle

But resiliency only means that a thing retains its shape. That it doesn't break, or lose its ability to function. It doesn't mean a child forgets the time she shared in the backyard with her mother gardening, or the fun they had together watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks at the Astro. It just means she learns to bear it. The mechanism that allowed Lisa Sample to keep her head above water in the wake of her mother's departure has not been described or cataloged by scientists. It's efficient, and flexible, and probably transferable from one person to another should they catch the scent on each other. But the rest of the details about it aren't observable from the outside. You have to be closer than you really want to get to see how it works. ~ John Darnielle

Cool parents, I thought, are the ones who know nothing. It made me feel a little sad for mine, but I didn't say any of this. ~ John Darnielle

My grief sought out all parts of my body it hadn't yet inhabited, and I felt like I might collapse in on myself right there, at last, spectacularly ~ John Darnielle

Sometimes I do 'So Desperate' solo in the middle of the set. I really love to sing that song. ~ John Darnielle

Wrestlers give their bodies to their work. I don't know if I like the word 'crazy' here. What I would say is there are people who have a different relationship to their bodies than most people. ~ John Darnielle

If you get into a fight and somebody punches you, you get two feelings. One: That really hurts. Two: That relief in the realness of, like, Wow, this is what it is. It's not an intellectual process. ~ John Darnielle