Kurt Vile Quotes

I started realizing that music is the one area where I've always let go. When that saxophone goes into my mouth, I get into a space where I never think about the notes I've already played or anticipate the notes ahead.

I'm kind of lucky in the fact that I can take something that's in my head and write it down, or I can listen to a piece of music that somebody else has written and try to tap into what the music's saying and just kind of follow that, you know. I mean, nine times out of 10, I'm just kind of following where the music takes me.

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there's no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.

When I perform, I like to immerse myself in the music, and I just try to get off on the diversity of music.

Oh yes, much, because music is just something that comes to you. You don't question it.

I don't meditate before I play or compose, but I see playing and composing as meditative acts.

Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

Well, I would say that music just happens with me, I'm not in the driver's seat when I am at the piano, the piano is.

Music for me is a bit more spiritual. There are moments when I'm sitting at my piano, and I don't realize that I've been playing for two hours - it feels like divine power. I know it's so cheesy.

You're just playing, playing, playing, and then an image or something will come into your mind, and basically you're just narrating it with music, letting it move along.

The drive to create music that is pure is my highest priority. Sometimes I'll get extremely technical, and other times I'll just kind of go with the gods of music.

Ultimately, at the end of it, it's just trying to get into that space where you feel like you're hitting the right thing and you're making music. And it feels intuitive rather than being counterintuitive.

When you get in the pocket, there is a place where the music begins to play itself. When you can find that spot, it's the best feeling in the world.

Where music leads, I follow.

Music for me, it demands full concentration.

The way I did the first album... the way I wrote 'Church'... was just to trust my instincts with the music and let it kind of do what it does.

You have to react to what's around you in the moment, whatever the music is. Just think of it as some place you have to enter and you need to find the key.

I thank the Creator of the universe to have discovered the discipline of music was the greatest gift that I could have been given, the possibility to be a student working in the world.

I believe that music is a spiritual language. My everyday self is pretty mundane and boring, but when I'm making music it allows for me to communicate a kind of transcendence that I can't communicate otherwise.

You're just sort of searching for this 'thing' and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. All music is imperfect, but in jazz since you're improvising, at least the way I play, I'm trying to follow my train of thought in a solo.

Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.

We're not trying to change the world; just music.

At the end of the day I want to be the guy who experienced music in all type of ways, with hip-hop being the roots of it.

Music fathoms the sky.

You know, as you compose music, you're just off in your own world. You have no idea where reality is, so to have an idea of what people think is pretty hard.