Julian Casablancas Quotes

Pretty much the only goal I've had since the beginning, which I still have, is just to get better, work hard, focus, and everything else will just be a bonus. As long as I'm satisfied, and I think we're getting better with every song compared to the last, then I'm satisfied and that's all I want. If we don't achieve that, then I'll be disappointed.

People are always arguing: New York or L.A.? They're both great places, you know.

I feel slightly confused about certain things. Practical and tactical things. When you try to make everyone happy… in the end you've got to make yourself happy.

I feel like I've given up a lot of my fantasies. I just want to do things differently, and to a lot of people that's annoying. I like weird stuff. I always hoped if we had a big success it would be on our own terms.

No one leaves an old friend unless they are ashamed.

Greed is the inventor of injustice as well as the current enforcer.

I'd like to just get to a point where maybe we can say something that will be matterful. That's definitely not a word, by the way.

There are so many little places I want to play, sometimes weird places I think would be fun to play... a bar that's half full.

My parents separated when I was eight. I grew up with my mom alone.

I mean, I guess you could say I'm a bit of a perfectionist.

No matter who I'm talking to, I always talk like I'm doing an interview.

I always want to make Strokes records and play Strokes shows.

The only goal right now that I can have, the only thing I can offer right now, is the need to get good at music, do something with quality.

I see myself out of my own eyes, which means I have no idea what's going on the other way around. I just think I try to be a good person, and I fail.

I want to be one of those people, be they writers, poets, musicians, who leaves clues for the next generation. The really good people leave clues that help feed the human race. That's my aspiration.

When the Strokes first started playing gigs, instead of getting into a costume for the shows, we talked about how we should dress every day, in real life, like we're playing onstage. I don't really care about clothes, but it's about wearing something that gives you social confidence. Or maybe helps you pick up chicks.

I enjoy songwriting. It's slow-motion improvising.

I think all of Manhattan has pretty much become a bar-slash-nightclub-slash-restaurant. There were always pockets of that. But now every corner of Manhattan is that.

The best solutions are often simple, yet unexpected.

Boarding school didn't feel like my world, I felt like an alien; people there had a lot of money.

I'm not a pop song lyric writer. I can't just focus on one simple meaning or even a double entendre.

Working on music is the funnest thing for me, and I love it, and I could do it all day, all night.

The problem with touring isn't the traveling and the shows, it's the vegetal state you get into.

A band is a good way to break up a friendship.

When you first start writing a song, it's fun, then when you start recording it, it's fun, but by the time you've finished recording it, you're sick of it.

Religion is never the problem; it's the people who use it to gain power.

It was 100,000 years before we figured out what to do with fire. Imagine cavemen, sitting in front of a fire, eating raw meat for 100 thousand years.

Kids are always honest, 'cause they don't think they're ever going to die.

Art is the image of life, it's purpose simply to enhance it.

I kinda like messing with perception a little bit. Kind of what drugs do sometimes, and drinking. I mean, you know, you mess with your mind a little bit to see life from different angles. Within reason, if you can handle it.

I don’t shake at the site of alcohol anymore. I don’t feel the need for it. If anything I’ll get stoned. I always told myself if it got to the point that it was affecting my songwriting and music that I’d stop. And it did get to the point.

I don't really care about clothes, but it's about wearing something that gives you social confidence.

The British press can be so annoying. They jerk you off with one hand and smack you with the other.

If it doesn't start with you, it dies with you.

In L.A., it's so sunny out all the time that even though I'm working all day I have this illusion that I'm on some kind of vacation. New York is so condensed and exciting but you stay there too long and all that turns into anxiety a little bit. It's nice to escape here and there.

Making an album can be like being pregnant: you want to pop that thing out and show everybody!

Can our mind evolve to be something other than an extension of our animal needs?

But it can be hard to experiment when you're in a band.

The artistic element of Manhattan has kind of moved to Brooklyn. Has it changed it? Yeah. Has it ruined it? I would say no. It is what it is. I say better that than an urban war zone.

I'm happy to feed the illusion that I'm a lazy recluse.

Who you are vs. who you wish you were: Who wins?

L.A. is a vortex. The weather there tricks you into thinking you're on vacation, even when you're working fourteen hours a day.

When I hear Sam Cooke's 'A Change Is Gonna Come', it frustrates me because no matter how hard I try, I can never be that good.

If you're in a bar and a certain song comes on and the vibe is just different, it evokes the kinds of things that you want to feel, and if music can do that it's a very special thing.

Whenever I go to shows, I end up looking at what shoes the guy onstage is wearing and the jacket he's got on. And when you know everything's gonna be under scrutiny, it makes you feel more comfortable if you have cool stuff.

Don't you dare get to the top and not know what to do.

A band is a great way to destroy a friendship, and a tour's a great way to destroy a band.

I guess the best thing about marriage is the fact you've got the coolest partner you can imagine by your side for all the things you're going to face in your life. So far, Juliet's been there for me. She's been good for my voice, good for my everything.