Elliott Smith Quotes

Playing things too safe is the most popular way to fail.

I don't really like New York better than Portland. It's just a different place.

But I was also doing odd jobs around Portland, like spreading gravel and transplanting bamboo trees.

I got tired of doing battle with people thinking I was a little weird because I wasn't in a band making happy, stilted music. The only people who really seem weird to me are people who think they're normal. People who think it's possible to be normal just by doing the same things that most people do. Is there a most people? I don't know. Television makes it seem like there is, but I think that might just be television.

Theres a bunch of Elvis Costello records that made all the difference between feeling like a total freak and feeling like ... only a freak. A freak among other freaks

I didn't have a hard time making it. I had a hard time letting it go.

Everything means nothing to me

I liked the idea of a self-contained, endless pursuit of perfection. But I have a problem with perfection. I don't think perfection is very artful. But there's something I liked about the image of a skater going in this endless twisted circle that doesn't have any real endpoint. So the object is not to stop or arrive anywhere; it's just to make this thing as beautiful as they can.

I truly hope the future will bring me something to feel nostalgic about, because there's really nothing much so far I can remember fondly.

Somewhere where people aren't so mad would be nice, but I don't know if there is anywhere like that.

Everybody gets a tag. If you listen to a Velvet Underground record, you don't think, 'Godfathers of Punk.' You just think, 'This sounds great.' The tags are there in order to help try to sell something by giving it a name that's going to stick in somebody's memory. But it doesn't describe it. So 'depressing' isn't a word I would use to describe my music. But there is some sadness in it -- there has to be, so that the happiness in it will matter.

Music is worth doing just because. It doesn’t have to be justified by some political point of view, and it’s kind of insulting to the music to make it a tool for something else.

Haven't laughed this hard in a long time. I better stop now before I start crying. Go off to sleep in the sunshine...I don't want to see the day when its dying.

There's always that argument to make - that you're in better company historically if people don't understand what you're doing.

I'm happy some of the time, and some of the time I'm not. But like when I see a movie, for example, that I really like, that moves me or whatever, it's usually happy and sad at the same time.

A lot of people are kind of depressed. I'm happy some of the time, and some of the time I'm not.

I mean people just have a way of - y'know they'll review your record in two sentences and put you in this little stupid box that you don't want to be in

You can't get better at things you never play.

I think the suggestion that all my songs are personal is insulting because that assumes that I have a bunch of issues that I feel the need to unload on strangers. That is not the case. It also assumes that I just talk about myself the whole time which, again, is not true.

The devil's script sells you the heart of a blackbird.

If you play acoustic guitar you're the depressed, sensitive guy.

He made his life a lie so he might never have to know anyone.

I think the music business will eventually crush me, but I [smiles]... I'm ready.

People can be chaos but it's hard to fit it into some creative piece that you made. It's hard.

It's just that a lot of songs that are popular right now, they don't have any meaning

It was kind of ridiculous to carry it up to a certain point and then drop the ball or the bomb, like quitting the band right after we had signed to Virgin.

It's a lot easier to tell the truth usually.

There are lots of things I like about playing in a band, the things I cant do by myself you know.

They say that God makes problems just to see what you can stand, before you do as the devil pleases.

I wondered if I would talk about drug use. But I guess, why hide it?

The band's filter, but playing live is a lot of fun.

Doing battle with themselves that way, every day, all the time and sometimes it sucks, but other times it results in people making sort of a dream comprehensible to someone else.

All your secret wishes could right now be coming true.

People think they know all these things about other people, and if you ask them why they think they know that, it'd be hard for them to be convincing.

I watched myself put my paw in the bear trap on that one because there was this clause about leaving members

People are so... seem so chaotic internally, but being filtered through some form, like making a record, sort of filters it down into something that can be understood.

I can't think of anything off the top of my head that seems more important than something designed to raise money to keep something going that keeps IV drug users from dying.

Burning every bridge that I cross to find some beautiful place to get lost.

I don't really think of time off as writing blocks. I think that's a western notion of demonizing inactivity. When your imagination decides it needs to take a nap. maybe that's what it needs to do.

It's hard to represent chaos, or like an absence of something. It's much easier to represent the presence of something or a situation.

I just wanted to move out of Portland to do something.

My girlfriend at the time convinced me to send these songs to Cavity Search. When they wanted to put out my record I was totally shocked.

It touches on drug use. I got caught up in that for almost two years.

I rode on a float in one of the parades in Mississippi. It's an experience.

So if somebody writes a song that appears to have some meaning then everybody thinks that it's a really heavy song.

Certain songs just feel a way that's hard to put into words and it's not happy and it's also not really sad but I couldn't say what it is

I see you're leaving me and taking up with the enemy, the cold comfort of the in-between, a little less than a human being.

Fights problems with bigger problems.

If I seem to be reckless with myself,It's the fault of no one.All things have a placeUnder the moon as well as the sun.

I walked out and Jack Nicholson was sitting about six feet away, so I avoided that area and I looked up at the balcony in the back and sang the song.