Ben Folds Quotes

My job is to be some sort of music/lyric psychic, to figure out that that's the right song to not fight the lyric.

I've gotten to the point where I realize that I need to tell my truth in music and not walk around blabbing my mind.

I used to do this big rant at the end of some gigs with Ben Folds Five. The band broke into this big heavy metal thing and I started as a joke to scream in a heavy metal falsetto. I found myself saying things like: Feel my pain, I am white, feel my pain.

I drink a lot, probably too much. My scene while writing lyrics is always a bottle of scotch and stacks of note cards, pencil and pencil sharpener. I throw around note cards and drink.

In many ways, I've chosen to be plain, almost too plain, too self-effacing. Like, if I record a vocal and I don't like the way it sounds, I would have them turn it up and take the reverb off it to make it as plain as possible.

People learn at the rate they are going to learn.

If the melody is telling me this is what the song is about, then I'm sort of forced into confession, autobiography or fantasy. If I don't do that, I've hamstrung the melody.

I think alcohol is a good drug for me when I'm writing. I don't think I've ever had a problem with it. I can stop for a few weeks, so I think it's okay. I don't think it's good for my liver, but I do love it. It's a huge part of my life, and it makes me happy.

I have manic energy. What can be done about it? I don't know what to say sometimes. I'm professional in public, but I like to stay inside and be a hermit.

The music business is a weird business. Sometimes licensing doesn't happen because some business component that you never knew about stops it.

You never know when you put out an album that's unique whether it'll get beat up for it or not.

A lot of 18-year-olds are like old men. They think they've seen everything.

Why would I want to sound like Joni Mitchell? I've got Joni Mitchell records, and they're great, and I couldn't possibly be that good.

When someone really goes to tell you something about what they're thinking, they're going to wear that experience with them. That's what you have to share.

I could probably live in Bali the rest of my life and completely live in the sticks and have a f - king moped and make a record every couple of years and not step in public and break even like I do anyway. That's really tempting.

Everything I write is personal, really. Even when I'm sarcastic, it's quite personal. And on this record, from the production to the singing to the performances, I got it really honest. To the modern ear, it seems soft. When you hear it against other things, it seems vulnerable. Lyrically and musically, though, this is more subtle. And, yes, it's asking a lot of someone who's used to being hit over the head with bright neon to listen to this.

I'm older than I was, and I'm still washed-up, and I haven't changed my music one iota. It's just much easier to do this when people are being nice to you.

I'm definitely an anomaly, but I'm making things. They're selling, say, martinis, and I'm kind of making vintage Riesling. People aren't going to sit there very often, not your average public, and your average music-business monster is not going to take the time to notice the overtones and the undertones inside the flavor. They'd rather just have the martini.

There is still some art in pop music. But it can't happen if you're not inspired.

The less I talk in bars, write emails, express myself in an emotionally lewd way outside of my songwriting, the more I have to do it through my music.

Because I write very simply, but inside the simplicity, there's a lot of subtlety. That's what I'm proud of.

And all I really want to say is you're the reason I want to stay.

With a song, it only takes a couple of minutes to go back to the beginning and try it again to see if it works. The novel freaks me out because, what if you get into the eighth chapter and think, 'Let's go to the top and see if this works again? It's going to take me three weeks.' I'm in awe of that.

White people don't sing together very often, and when they do, it's about the celebrity of the song. The singing at my shows is all about harmony.

Notes don't make music until you learn to insert silence between them.

I want people to listen to my lyrics and be okay with themselves. The people who have it the roughest are homosexuals who come out of the closet.

I look to an out gay man or woman as pretty much what I would aspire to. The strength that it takes to do that and the floodgates that open and what they pay for it.

The reason I stop playing songs is usually because I get sick of them, and then they find themselves back into the set list at some point.

I start songs all the time. If I weren't so lazy, I would finish them. It's like when I have a deadline I have to. I always feel very lucky that I am forced to make records at certain times. If I was forced to make 2 records a year, I would write twice as many songs. I can't make myself finish something unless I am forced

Being capable of anything is a bullshit concept, unless it means you also admit that you're capable of cheating, lying and killing.

I'm not really a strange person or anything, so if there's music I like, usually there's other people who like it too.

I think people use temp music quite a bit, but the people who write the temp music don't ever really learn that their music was inspiring a movie.

The nice thing about age is worrying less and less about what people think.

If you're afraid they might discover your redneck past, there are a hundred ways to cover your redneck past.

Im really good at writing almost hits.

I'm aware that I'm very fringe, and it's nice that way.

Next door, there's an old man who lived to his nineties and one day passed away in his sleep. And his wife, she stayed for a couple of days and passed away. I'm sorry, I know that's a strange way to tell you that I know we belong.

I feel like a quote out of context.

You can't really control how people hear stuff. It's hard to remember that. I have to let go of it.

It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.

Off the coast and I'm headed nowhere

Even though I live in America more, I feel like when I go to Adelaide, that's when I get to go home.

I don't leave my neighborhood. I don't go anywhere. There are four blocks I live in and there are two coffee shops, one at each end of the block... so I don't do much driving... Some people would say they never see me because I don't go anywhere. I stay in the blue state of Nashville, in my bubble.

It's like being in the position of - in half of the industry's mind, you're kind of a cult-following, independent rocker. And on the other hand, you're a sellout. But neither one of them are right.

I'm romantically inclined. No human being on Earth is not attracted to other people. There is no fairy tale that they only have eyes for you. You just choose to act on it or not.

If I'm in a relationship and my girlfriend is sleeping with other people, I don't need to know who it is; I just want to know how she feels about it.

Billy Joel and Joe Jackson were both great, and they both play piano.

Everyone, when you're a teenager and you're growing up, you do feel like your life is dramatic enough to be on a TV screen, but we know that it's not.