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.
John DarnielleI couldn't name more than a couple of good drum'n'bass acts, and I have no idea what's big in the dance world right now.
John DarnielleI'm kind of a hermit. Left to my own devices, I won't submerge myself in anything further afield than the driveway.
John DarnielleMay we all emerge from winter with our strength renewed and any unwanted pieces left under the ice.
John DarnielleEvery place on earth has a frequency. It's not good or bad, it's just the way it is, and if you can attune yourself to that frequency, then you can find comfort in that.
John DarnielleLife is hard, you're tired, and there's disease. The strategy that works for children is to be delighted by the things that delight you.
John DarnielleI'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people who listen to what I do. But they have this additional aspect of how they take the stuff that I do, and so it broadens the work and it creates this strange connection. It's really a way of strangers communicating through this third thing, which is a body of work. But really, I know it's a cliché to say I write for myself, but I write for myself.
John DarnielleYou can get really good reads on your dreams if you think of every character in them as actually being you.
John DarnielleHuman 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."
John DarnielleWhat's funny is that people think, "Well there has to be something more than wrestling, because wrestling has such an absurd quality to it." But if you tell a love story, people don't ask what else is in there. They say, "Oh, it's just a love story." All stories have many levels, but these ones show their hand and say, "You might want to look a little deeper."
John DarnielleGiving up and doing something else (nursing, for me) was exactly what eventually led me to making music that other people wanted to hear.
John DarnielleBack in the 90s, if you did mail order in music, you could make a good living doing it if you could hustle.
John DarnielleI usually kind of can't wait until my records leak. Back in the day, you could give people tapes, but you can't do that anymore, because it would be available to everyone on the planet within an hour.
John DarnielleConservative forces in the South have a lot of power - almost dynastic - dating back many years.
John DarnielleI just started writing stuff to kill time on summer evenings. This is why I'm always telling people who ask me what they need to do to succeed to give up, do something else.
John DarnielleTake dance music: I like enough of it and its history to be able to say a word or two about this or that record, but I'm nobody's authority.
John DarnielleI always worry that I'm a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don't have exhaustive knowledge of much. Take dance music: I like enough of it and its history to be able to say a word or two about this or that record, but I'm nobody's authority. I couldn't name more than a couple of good drum'n'bass acts, and I have no idea what's big in the dance world right now.
John DarnielleThere'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.
John DarnielleI 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.
John DarnielleI worked the AV counter at the Roland Heights public library in the '80s. My best story from the library was the time a couple asked for a recommendation, and I recommended Raising Arizona and they absolutely hated it. They came back hungry for blood. I was on my lunch break and my boss came out and said, "Hey kid, you need to come talk to these people. They totally hate Arizona." And he said, "Arizona's a dog; nobody gets that movie."
John DarnielleI really love Durham more than any place I've ever been; some small towns can be really provincial and strangling, but Durham is the best city in the world.
John DarnielleI don't understand being idle; I don't have an idle setting. I probably should develop one.
John DarnielleWhile writing is a mystical process, it's also work. If you show up to work five days in a row, nobody's going to pat you on the back - everyone does that. Well, do that with your writing. Just show up. Be there for it. When you get an idea, write it down somewhere and then be a steward of that idea.
John DarnielleYou should avoid seeing too much of yourself anywhere: in the outside world, in others, in the imagined worlds that give you shelter.
John DarnielleI think The Sunset Tree is really the album on which I really learned to trust other musicians, which is so important.
John DarnielleI make up stories that take place in real space with real people. If I could convert this into a technique for experimental novels, I might really be onto something.
John DarnielleWhen I became conscious of being a person, when I was very small, I knew that I was from Indiana, but I had never seen Indiana. I was born there, but we moved when I was, like, a year old. I always had a sense of a place that was far away from where I was. I would research it and find out about it and I remember on Christmas morning I used to always call Indiana to find out what the weather was like; to see if it was snowing or not.
John DarnielleFrom 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.
John DarnielleI'm not really a goal-oriented guy. I started doing the Mountain Goats just for the sheer hell of it.
John Darnielle[Robert] Aikman would write horror stories that weren't gore, they weren't slashers, and they weren't monster stories either. He called them ghost stories. The main thing about them was the vibe. It was really disquieting. He wanted to sketch the scene so that you could see it and know the characters and get a feel for the motion - and then ask yourself why and not get a final answer. Leave something that itches. I loved that!
John DarnielleI'm so disconnected from an indie-rock community that I am the hermit people used to guess I was.
John DarnielleI suspect by the time the Beatles were writing the White Album, they didn't go, "'I Wanna Hold Your Hand!' I wanna play that!" It's like if somebody asked you to put on the clothes you wore in high school. Well, no. No!
John DarnielleYou'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.
John DarnielleDiagnoses exist to help get people services they need - but there's no such thing as mental illness. We're all mentally ill.
John DarnielleI have a hunger for justice, but art is a place I've always enjoyed being able to be free - to live in worlds that you don't have to be thinking about that all the time. I don't see myself writing Upton Sinclair books. My books are to entertain, although to me, entertainment is to make you feel sadness or to get in touch with your own pain - or fear, or to remember somebody who has gone missing from your life. That's my calling.
John DarnielleI think taking too long to work on a record you sort of lose some of the feeling, so I write as fast as I can; it's just this manic phase where I'm by myself and or on tour and I write and I write. And I send them to the guys, and we start planning our studio ventures.
John DarnielleI always worry that I'm a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don't have exhaustive knowledge of much.
John DarnielleI was 14 or 15 when I discovered poetry, and I pretty much stopped writing prose until Master of Reality.
John Darnielle