John Darnielle Quotes

It's easy to follow national politics and weigh in on social media, but if I'm tweeting stuff about Chatham County, no one cares.

This is the funny thing about me. People think John just comes up with all the ideas. I'm honored. People think I have a big old brain, but actually I am the sum of the people I work with.

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.

Music is a permanent art, it will always go through phases where you like it and are in tune with it, but saying that music "got bad" is infantile. The same is true with your life.

Diagnoses exist to help get people services they need - but there's no such thing as mental illness. We're all mentally ill.

From a very young age, I was the kind of kid you can just put anywhere and I'd still find stuff to be stoked about.

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.

You can get into anything if you are determined. I always thought that with music, too.

There's this idea that there was a point in our childhood when we were in some way better than we are now and we should try to hang on to that.

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.

I get nostalgic about having lived in Ames, Iowa, even though being a vegetarian in Iowa is not fun.

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

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

Kayfabe is kind of a code. To break kayfabe is to let people know that the punch was not real and that the match was scripted.

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.

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.

Everybody is in various states of needing to transcend something. I believe in mental health care, but when we call people "crazy," we exclude them from our circle.

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.

It's a cliché to state that one should think like a child, but it's clear that kids know something that the world tries to make you unlearn later in life.

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.

The reality of having a kid involves day-to-day practicality - not broader philosophical outlooks.

You learn to present dark things without including their ability to harm, treasuring them for what they are.

I don't understand being idle; I don't have an idle setting. I probably should develop one.

When you know where somebody is, you know the most important thing about them.

I don't really have any position to complain about my job. Yeah, every job has its moments like, "Ah, you know, it's Wednesday." But I'm blessed. I love my work.

Conservative forces in the South have a lot of power - almost dynastic - dating back many years.

Our [former] governor [Pat McCrory] was supposed to be a moderate, but he found himself beholden to people who have much more draconian ideas. I think he assumed this stuff flew under the radar.

Human beings are selfish by nature. Everything that happens to a child, you immediately grab your own child and say, "I will never let that happen to you."

I was 14 or 15 when I discovered poetry, and I pretty much stopped writing prose until Master of Reality.

I'm so disconnected from an indie-rock community that I am the hermit people used to guess I was.

There are real teachers out there; I don't pretend to have their mantle.

You're not really going to know what a place is like 'til you've lived there a few years - you sort of just have to go with your gut.

The possibility of disaster remains horrific to me. Like when you know everything's about to go wrong in a way that's not controllable or knowable.

It's hard always to say what it is one likes about a place, for me. I feel it.

Anger is preverbal, so, by the time you're using words to express an angry feeling, you're already imposing loads of structure on that primal experience.

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

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.

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

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

I know it's a cliché to say I write for myself, but I write for myself.

When I was a kid, I was a big science fiction fan, but current horror books were harder to get your hands on.

If you're standing in the middle of a ring and you're playing the villain, and everyone is booing and throwing things at you, that's real.

Gender relations are a sad story of men talking trash about women all over the world.

I grew up in Southern California, so the whole concept of a local music history is still kinda novel to me.

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

I just started going to shows. I don't know how submerged I am: I feel guilty that I don't get out more, but I really like being inside the house.

It makes me envious of anybody who can say truly that they don't care what anybody thinks of what they do, because I care a lot about the people who like my stuff.

Labor for a lot of people has a negative connotation. But not for me. I always want to be working.

Giving up and doing something else (nursing, for me) was exactly what eventually led me to making music that other people wanted to hear.

I do have a romantic interest in outlasting everybody else. There's a sort of sad machismo to singer-songwriters, I think.