T Bone Burnett Quotes

I love loud music. I listen loud, and that's part of how I've learned how to do this. Record softly and play back loud and a whole other thing happens.

I got out of high school, bought a recording studio and started operating it as an engineer and a producer.

Risk is what separates the artist from the artisan.

The more perfect music we have, the more attractive the peculiarities and anomalies of human performance become. Perfection is a second rate idea.

We live in an age lit by lightnin'; after the flash, we're blind again.

The essence of show business is, if you see a tight-rope walker go across a tight rope, everybody claps. But, if you see him wobble, everybody gasps.

When the arts are eliminated, children get bored and tired of school. When the arts are included, children's imaginations are allowed to run wild.

If it is true that we have a personal relationship with God, then that's enough for me.

You know, the thing that struck me about Civil War music was how bloody it was; it was full of hatred. There was incredible vitriol in it.

I think we in the Alpha Band, which was a strange group anyway, weren't dealing with any of these issues. They sneaked up on us and took us over, before we know what was going on.

Everything around a writer, or musician in the record business, probably everything in all the United States or in all of western civilization, is about competition.

It's also ironic that in the old days of tape and tape hiss and vinyl records and surface noise, we were always trying to get records louder and louder to overcome that.

Technology changes nothing.

I've seen a study in the last year that digital sound actually induces stress in the listener.

I naturally wanted to be saved, so when I came home I told my mom I wanted to be confirmed. That's the way I related to it, being raised an Episcopalian. I went to Dallas and got confirmed.

Honesty is the most subversive of all disguises.

My original idea was to produce and not make records myself.

Music was the medium through which knowledge was passed from generation to generation.

If Picasso walked into Disney looking for a job, they would throw him out on the street. Couldn't draw good enough.

I don't hear any of the popular stuff unless it's good 'cause I pay no attention to popular culture, at all.

The internet has surrounded television and turned television into an art form.

Still, records are documents of a period of time. Most records are documents of two or three years, and I just approached it as a record I was doing over a 20-year period of time.

For centuries, everything was taught through music. History was taught through music; language and mathematics were taught through music.

I can tell for sure, the technologists have made it clear that they don't care about musicians. The arts have been sacrificed on the altar of technological advancement.

Probably the deepest use of music and of art is to create conscience.

I figured out early on what I wanted to do.

I'm not stupid enough to want to be famous. But I would like to be able to earn a living playing music.

At different times in my life I met God from a different point of view.

Almost everything The Beatles did was great, and it's hard to improve on. They were our Bach. The way to get around it may be to keep it as simple as possible.

I want to write songs and play them for people - live.

My advice for young people is that, if you want to be a musician, the thing to do is practice eight hours a day.

The hallmark of an artist is generosity.

I don't want to make music for people who don't care about music.