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People Quotes by John Darnielle

45 People quotes by John Darnielle

All People quotes John Darnielle’s page

John Darnielle talks about feeling trapped and wanting freedom. He mentions how calling people “crazy” pushes them out, how mental illness touches everyone, and how stories can be built from real places and people. He also points out that the South has a strong activist tradition and that breaking a wrestling script reveals the truth.

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

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People want you to play the songs they know. I try not to reflect too much, and I don't really like to…

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

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

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People say friends don't destroy one another - what do they know about friends?

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I don't like to say, "Oh, I don't like this kind of music." I like to listen to it and try to…

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The studio's a collaborative environment. I just try to let people bring their own ideas to the songs and see what happens.

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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…

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I consider myself a lyricist first and foremost, but if you get something else out of what I do, that's fine too.…

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The South actually has a very strong tradition of activism. The civil rights movement came from down here! It was black activists…

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People will complain that they don't want to wait around for lightning to strike, but why not? If you invest yourself in…

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In death metal, a lot of guys are Eddie Van Halen disciples, but they take his style to really expressionistic places. It's…

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

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In wrestling, people just throw each other around, possibly actually bleed, and are still friends in the locker room afterwards. But there's…

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This is the funny thing about me. People think John just comes up with all the ideas. I'm honored. People think I…

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I make up stories that take place in real space with real people. If I could convert this into a technique for…

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There's no such thing as mental illness. We're all mentally ill and we're all haunted by something, and some people manage to…

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If my songs are being listened to between any other songs, that is awesome, and I'm glad people are getting something out…

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I worked the AV counter at the Roland Heights public library in the '80s. My best story from the library was the…

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It's an important moment as a reader, I think, when you can forget the question of whether you need to know what…

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I'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people…

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People always talk about good time rock and roll, Chuck Berry or whatever, like this liberating force for feeling good. But what…

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What's funny is that people think, "Well there has to be something more than wrestling, because wrestling has such an absurd quality…

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The only people who are afraid of file sharing are the people whose albums are so dull presentation-wise that nobody cares about…

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

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People talk about songwriting or comedy as creative expression, but life is creative expression. Table-making, even nursing, is extraordinarily creative.

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

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

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

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Young people like to feel self-righteous, like they're on the right side of things.

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People involved in my personal life make fun of me a lot for not being jaded.

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If my songs are being listened to between any other songs, that is awesome, and I'm glad people are getting something out…

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

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This is why people cry at the movies: because everybody’s doomed. No one in a movie can help themselves in any way.…

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In the present political situation, it's an interesting phenomenon to look at: what is the appeal of an autocratic leader? Why do…

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It makes me envious of anybody who can say truly that they don't care what anybody thinks of what they do, because…

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Our [former] governor [Pat McCrory] was supposed to be a moderate, but he found himself beholden to people who have much more…

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I just started writing stuff to kill time on summer evenings. This is why I'm always telling people who ask me what…

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I usually kind of can't wait until my records leak. Back in the day, you could give people tapes, but you can't…

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I did a lot of music criticism. I don't think much of it was any good. I think I wanted to show…

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More by John Darnielle

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

“But secret agents, like God, only give signs to their confidants. They are also very cruel and even unhappy at times. At any rate,…

“I am heavy in his arms, and I feel safe there, but I am lost, and I need constantly to be shoring up the…

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

If you get into a fight and somebody punches you, you get two feelings. One: That really hurts. Two: That relief in the realness…

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

It's impossible to be content all the time - you have to learn to be content in places where you're unhappy and owning your…

“It's in the nature of the landscape to change, and it's in the nature of people to help the process along...”

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

“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…

“One thing I’ve learned is it’s better sometimes, in the weeds, to resist the temptation to stand up and follow the compass. *”

People always talk about good time rock and roll, Chuck Berry or whatever, like this liberating force for feeling good. But what I need…

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

“Another nagging little question lodged like a bit of grapeshot in his chest. It was nothing major, but the place where he stored them…

I'm not really a goal-oriented guy. I started doing the Mountain Goats just for the sheer hell of it.