Trey Anastasio Quotes

Literally wrote 'Starboy' in 30 minutes.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't.

I write in the studio.

When we make records, it's hard to pinpoint one thing that inspires a record. It's usually a number of different things that lead to inspiration or wanting to write something down and share it with someone.

The tough thing about writing is you go into a room alone, you close the door and you do your work.

I try to read a lot and listen to a lot of good songwriters, and I try to actually work on the craft of writing a song rather than just leaving it up to inspiration.

As a songwriter, I go into the studio, and I just try to write a great song.

I think that the process of making music is a hard one to describe as well.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

I can't just sit down and make a song in a day. It's only possible if you focus on the music and not the sound.

When I do write, it happens really easily. I'll just kind of sing along to whatever I'm playing, then find a line to build off of, then sit down and write. When I do write, I take care of business!

I'd never written a song before 'The Blood'; I didn't know it was going to be a song.

I've never sat down and tried to write something for some occasion. You just write the tune and stay totally wide open to everything. It'll find the person or persons who are supposed to do it.

Writing music and lyrics, you tend to become a control freak - sitting alone in your room with a bare light bulb over your head, writing communist manifestos.

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.

If you're a songwriter, you have to do homework. You can exist for a while on the inspiration, but at some point, you have to sit down and have the discipline to write - to finish the poem, as they say.

Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.

There are no rules to writing a song.

For me, making music just starts with a simple melody, and lyrics will come sometime after that.

Composing demands a degree of isolation.

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

Working as a musician, I have to constantly generate new material, so school keeps me sharp. Reading and writing all the time helps me to be a better songwriter.

I am an inventor of music.

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.