Ryan Adams Quotes

There is nothing wrong with loving the crap out of everything. Negative people find their walls. So never apologize for your enthusiasm. Never. Ever. Never.

When I'm in New York, I just want to walk down the street and feel this thing, like I'm in a movie.

You could eat sushi off my bookshelf. My cleaning regime is like a battleground. I'm Genghis Khan and my cleaning products are my Mongolian army and I take no prisoners. The rest of my life is an experiment in chaos so I like to keep my flat neat.

I want to make sure I'm with a girl that's a good kisser, and that when I wake up, I have coffee and a cigarette. That's all I really want out of life. That, and world domination.

Some things were made to be felt

That's why I played music; my social skills were limited. I think a lot of people that experience that pick up guitars, because they can't communicate otherwise.

They don't make coats for this kind of cold

Bad nights lead to better days

I'm never argumentative for the sake of being argumentative, I don't think. And more than ever, I've had to be willing to fight just to get records released, or just to be able to walk away with a little bit of self-respect and pride.

While you can fill every heart as your own full of laughter loud as gold and passion quick as silver.

I no longer know the author of this book, for simply stopping long enough and writing it down was where I changed from a boy with his eyes squeezed shut to a man with his eyes wide open so that the sunlight might reach my heart despite all that darkness.

Is it possible to love someone too much? You bet.

I kiss her mouth and I know... for everything there is a word... for everything but this.

Some people want to go forever, I just want to burn off hard and bright.

I should've died a hundred thousand times,Teetering stoned off the side of a building.Nobody loved me and nobody even triedYou can't hang on to something that won't stop moving.Singing and dancing to them nighttime songs.

A lot of my songs, they're like puzzle pieces, and there's just one way to put them together. You could, if you needed to, get the scissors out and cut up things to make them work. But I don't want to do that.

To conceive music, to execute it in front of others, to make it so others can do it...it can be pretty humbling, and kind of scary. So yeah, I don't really feel in competition with anybody. Not because I feel elitist, but because I have enough self-competition. I'm always struggling.

I like the idea that within the structure of the song, some kind of built-in improvisation keeps them fragile and in their moment, so that I'm not projecting so much, so that my perception of the song doesn't interfere with what its real body is. Sometimes it's like telling a story that I heard in passing, and I don't want it to become completely mine.

Can you still have any famous last words if you're somebody nobody knows?

I'm definitely in the market for being uncool. There was some funny stuff, like the thing about making sure I show people that I have tattoos and cigarettes so that they know I'm badass. But really, I do have tattoos! And I do smoke cigarettes sometimes, and I can't change that. But I am not badass, by any means. I do some stuff that's tongue-in-cheek, and some stuff that's on the line. And it could be funny, it could be serious, and I never even know myself, because it could be funny that day, and the next day it's totally embarrassing.

I'm a pretty bad troubadour. I'm more of a music fan who got away with making records.

I have found in black metal the lyrics are profoundly beautiful... a pathos and mythos at the same time.

My intentions have been, and are always, to just really get behind what my ideas are musically and to just ride this thing out, cause it feels good, and I think for the most part it's good music. Even when it's not, I'd like to still search for something that could be even like a little bit mind-blowing or shocking to me.

The weirdest thing I've been fascinated with nowadays is the new contemporary country music, which to me sounds like very strange '70s pop, and sometimes like rock music. But some of the themes in there - maybe it's because I know how the songs were written, but it really does sound like it was written by two or three people, with the idea to appeal to the most general audience.

I think that music, or at least the kind of music that I make, benefits greatly from improvisation.

A lot of the songs I write are like songs that I've never been able to find on any record, but that I've always wanted to hear. Or maybe in a style I already loved, but I was looking for something in it that I wasn't hearing yet.

I use to be panicked, but know I'm curious!

When You're young, you get sad, and you get high.

I think it would be wrong to consider 'Ashes and Fire' a love album. The record is obsessed with time. I believe that there is a kinder view of the self on this record.

On Heartbreaker, I had to sing those songs. I drank the way I did those songs. I ate the way I did those songs. I communicated the way I did those songs.

There are times when I want to be plainspoken about my feelings in a song. But there are other times when it's really good to try and get my head around different kinds of song structures, or maybe I might get turned on by trying to write a song that would fit in this one scene in a movie. And by the end of all this, you just end up with a bunch of different ideas. And songs are really just ideas.

I've never been to Vegas, but I've gambled all my life.

I'm not the cool thing, and I'm not going to be the cool thing for a really long time, and it isn't like I'm not the cool thing and I sell 3,000,000 records every time. I'm not the cool thing, and I barely sell 150,000 records, if that, ever. So I'm obviously working really hard to sustain myself. I'm actually a target to be dropped, because that's just not enough records for a big company.

This is going to sound crazy, but I can hear music in my head. I can imagine a piano or a guitar playing, and I can sort of think out.

It would be really nice to make a record that would be super-fun to play live - a record that would be funny, with a little bit of heart.

Collaboration has become really integral to my process. I play music so that I can spend time with my friends and communicate in that way. I experience so much joy in that process, because, you know, it's those times of getting together and playing music and all that comes with it that are the best for me.

Music is my thing. It's my thing; it's what I love. It's what I do. It's football to me; it's Christmas to me; religion to me; poetry to me.

I think that we live in a time where it's easier to be suspicious of dedicated men and women, people dedicated to their craft, because the world around them inspires them to be lazy. It inspires them to be negative. It inspires them to be snarky.

If I had a reed made of lightening I could blow the sax all night... I don't know where one would acquire a reed made of lightening but I would imagine that Bill Clinton has one.

It's like — I don't know, sometimes it's like chasing a pretty girl on the beach. And things I never thought I could do... I can do.

I'm sort of planting Post-It notes all over my psyche. Do not skateboard wasted. Do not buy $10,000 rugs. Be careful what you say to journalists. You don't have to stay up until 7 A.M. - tomorrow is a new day.

I went down to Houston and I stopped in San 'Antone, I passed up the station for the bus. I was trying to find me something, but I wasn't sure just what... man, I ended up with pockets full of dust.

Part of the joy of music is listening to lots of different kinds of music and learning from it. Specifically for me, I like writing songs that move me, and what moves me are beautiful songs on the piano or the guitar and really, really heavy music.

There definitely isn't a structure anymore to how I get ideas. A lot of times I'll just write down a phrase, or I'll have an idea that's attached to just a few chords. Other times, it's work.

I was never much of a bass player.

Rock records. It's the main source of inspiration for people - fans, or musicians, or both - to act out in ways that they wouldn't normally act out. Especially rock critics. Ultimately, records don't really hurt anybody, and neither do reviews.

Writing and creating, those things come to me on their own. I feel like... you sort of summon them and it's like allowing the universe to enter your heart in an entirely different way to what it normally does. It's like inviting that energy of the universe to enter into your craft in a way where it has a meaning.

I quit drinking every night, at 1:30 A.M.

To make a song is a gift, and once it's done it keeps evolving and changing and becomes a tool to interact with other people. It's like a conversation.

Fame is an unnatural construct and those who go in search of it are the least likely to find it.