Bradford Cox Quotes

When young groups put out albums, they're always forced to go through this cycle of touring and talking and flaunting and posturing and peacocking. Nobody makes me do that anymore.

I'm not the guy in the dress with the blood and the unrequited gay whatever - which, according to my psychiatrist, my gayness is a form of narcissism but you'll have to ask him about that.

I was only in the public eye because I was annoying. You know how neurotic people may ask for one thing when they may really want another thing? It was like I was asking for attention, but I didn't really want attention.

I realized I had written maybe, I dunno, the first ever asexual love song. Where it's really just about a fear of dying alone - you need contact, you need love, you need empathy. You need this relationship but if there's no sex involved, people act like it's not a legitimate relationship.

Usually I'm not really conscious of what's going on. I don't have a lot of memories onstage. At all.

The sober guy is always going to have this air of arrogance or self-righteousness, but it's not my intention. I just knew that if I drank, I'd have a drinking problem.

I collaborate a little bit with different aspects of my own mind. I kick my own ass instead of kicking other people's asses.

A song like "Walkabout", it's totally imitative. The goal of that song was to make people happy, and I've never really made a song to make people happy before. I really genuinely wanted people to listen to that song and have their spirits lifted.

You gotta have friends, and it's really hard to have friends that don't operate on the same schedule as you or do the same kind of things you do, because they don't understand it. And then you realize that your friends - your real-life friends - it's not that they become fanboys of you but they become more interested in what you're doing than how you're doing.

I've been going through a lot of... stuff. I need some space, which people were very kind enough to give me, and I feel really gracious about that. Nobody forces me to do things or say things or do interviews.

It was like I was asking for attention, but I didn't really want attention.

As a homosexual, my job is simply to sodomize mediocrity.

When I do a record, it sounds more punk and raw. Or it will sound louder, or it will sound more shocking. Or mind-boggling. I'll be trying to figure it out, but once I've got it figured out I'll be like, I know this; I know where this came from. I think art is most interesting when the intention is not clear.

When money and fame happen too late, it's like pouring kerosene over a fire of self-loathing.

A lot of bands wanna do something new all the time and never repeat themselves, but I'm not so interested in that. If I feel like I can do it better the second time, I'll give it another shot.

We all come back to our little worlds.

I know so many people think my music is quite influenced by Animal Collective, but honestly I think maybe the factor is that we're both influenced by the same stuff.

When I got hit by the car, I became depressed. As a result, I've been on antidepressants and I feel like I have no sexuality left. People complain about that side effect, but I love it. I feel outside of society.

I've always said I write albums; I don't write random songs and then sort them out.

Everything I do is 100% automation, which means I'm just doing it live.

If you're not Jay-Z, a record leaking isn't going to affect you.

We didn't have MTV, and I was desperate for something. You know, you're young, you want something off the beaten path. And Twin Peaks was like, surrealism on network TV.

I'm tired of watching attractive people trying to be ugly, struggling for authenticity. Why not be yourself?

You're always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that's maybe even too weird for your own taste. In my case it's kind of weird because I started out being known more for ambient things and ambiguous music, but what's experimental for me is the more traditional structure. For me, experimenting involves traditionalism.

My entire education in music was in reading interviews with bands like Stereolab and finding out about Brazilian music or a Romanian composer. You expose yourself to what people you look up to admire.

Talk to Arto Lindsay and I'm sure he's tired of people asking him about DNA; he's probably really into what he's doing now, which is good stuff. I guess I probably feel like that. But I'm obviously not comparing myself to someone as iconic as that.

Contrary to popular belief, maybe, I'm a really friendly guy, I guess, and I really like meeting people. And I'm not really super impressed even if you're my hero; I can just rap with you and we can hang. I'm not gonna like sit there and bite my lip and ask questions about certain songs - okay I might do that once or twice. But it's just, like, two people hanging out.

I'm working on one of the projects at a time and I'm the zone of that project. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, and I might experiment with it in the future, but I'm not a fan of just random assemblages of songs at the moment.

I'm interested in acting as much as I'm interested in gardening. I want to garden, eventually. I want to learn how to do a lot of things. I've always wanted to learn how to paint, too. I'd like to try everything, but music is my reason for living.

I don't like the sound of my own voice. And, for people I don't know, their impression of me is what they read on the internet, and they're so far off a lot of the time.

I don't like the sound of my own voice. And, for people I don't know, their impression of me is what they read on the internet, and they're so far off a lot of the time. I think people are intimidated by me, and I don't know why. Sometimes even my own bandmates can be intimidated, or irritated, by me. I come across as arrogant somehow. In reality, I've probably got the lowest self-esteem of anybody I know, which has really been rubbed in my face lately in personal situations.

I'm more into Neil Young and radical honesty.

I always write the first and last song of an album first, and then the middle just kind of happens.

Audiences tend to dig the earlier stuff by any given musician, and the artists themselves always tend to prefer the thing that they're doing now.

When I started having a couple of beers and loosening up, I realized how many years I had wasted going back to my hotel room alone when I could have gone and just had a beer or two.

I see a lot of people doing an "'80s thing" who weren't even born until the '90s.

Unlike the rest of everyone I hang around with, I don't drink, so I remember what happened after shows. And I have never hit on anyone after a show, I'm not that kind of person. Even if I was attracted to someone, I'd be too shy.

I've been used for writing rhythm guitar chords for a long time because it's so easy to play and chords just sound good on it.

You think about people like Elvis, Kurt Cobain, or the Beatles, who grew up without privilege and needed a certain validation through peoples' acceptance, or admiration from their peers. And money is part of that, but it always comes too late.

People roll their eyes and say, "Oh god, he's not rich or famous." I say it's relative. I mean, look at me: I'm 115 pounds and I grew up without money. To me, I'm rich because I don't have to worry about paying rent. I don't think about money now.

I feel very strongly about the subject matter in The Dallas Buyer's Club - about AIDS and people fighting illnesses, and fighting for survival against bad conditions.

I don't think it will ever be lessened. Because I always move on to something else - and the music that I listen to, that I ingest, is a lot different than what I put out. I'm always becoming obsessed with the next phase of my musical vocabulary.