Wes Borland Quotes

I wrote my first song when I was about eight. It was about putting a diaper on a chicken!

I like being a storyteller. I'm bored with myself; I like to write about others. I have a lot of names in my songs: Karen, Margaret, Mary Kay. Even if it's about me, I want to put it through someone else. The music is the soundtrack to the story.

I found out a long time ago that if I didn't have a good story for a song, I could just make one up! Now it seems over half the stories in my show are made up. The funny thing is, those seem to be the ones that resonate the most with the audiences.

I'll take a certain concern of my own or a situation and try to frame it around a fictional story, but sometimes just straight-up autobiographical songs work well, and sometimes a story is better. I like stories. I like to hear them. I don't think there are enough of them in songs anymore.

Seriously, my music really does help my acting, and, like, getting in and out of a character from a different lifestyle and writing a song about it. Likewise, my acting inspires the music because I can write a theme that I wouldn't necessarily approach at all in life.

I wrote my first song when I was six or seven, a silly little song. But I used to write poems in high school - not songs.

As far as subject matter, I'd say most of the songs aren't that personal to me. I love making up characters and kind of having fun in a different kind of way.

I like people who tell stories. I like storytellers. A lot of my songs are misconceived as being auto-biographical when they're not because I write in the first person.

You live vicariously through your characters.

I'm good at coming up with wacky characters and funny dialogue.

People may think I'm trying something new by telling stories, but they're just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That's what I do.

The good thing about songwriting is you don't have to delineate between what's true and what's fiction; records aren't put on the shelf that way. Books are, movies are, but records aren't.

I think in most cases, when you're writing a song, you're just making up a little story, and you're not really thinking about making a point one way or another about it. You're just coming up with a little scenario and seeing it through, and that's it.

Characters are an extension of your imagination.

I've always toyed around with creating over-the-top lady characters in my head.

Usually, I think of the song, and then the video plays out in my head as I'm writing the song. I started rapping to become a comedian, so I'm certainly thinking about the visual component of things beyond just the music most of the time.

We try to write the best songs ever and they kinda come out funny.

I just love fiction. I love it.

I'm a storyteller, not a prophet. I'm just interested in a good story.

I have to have a guitar sitting around. I sing in the shower. I sing around the house. The music comes secondary. The lyrics come first.

Everyone seems quite good at stories and making them up.

A writer of fiction is really... a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea.

Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things.

Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.