Chris Thile Quotes

Acting is always therapeutic.

When I was in my 30s, I was at the end of a long-term relationship and going through a very hard time. I'd had about 15 different addresses and a series of relationships. I thought, 'It's time to have a look at yourself.'

I really don't feel that writing is therapy.

Writing does change you, and of course it feels good to do things, so you could say writing is de facto therapeutic. But really, one writes to write.

I wanted to make the album I always needed to make. I had to say the things I never could.

Writing music is such a freeing exercise, and it's really nice to play in that world of being confident, vengeful - getting back at all the bad boyfriends.

I always used to look at books and wonder how anybody could come up with so many words. But my divorce and then falling in love with somebody else has released in me an ability to write in other ways apart from songs.

Every work coming from the creator is about getting the demons out, and each character in those stories had a different personal crisis to get through.

I always give my students exercises where they really have to open a vein and bleed all over the paper and that's the way you get the important characters. Sooner or later every writer worth reading writes a story his mother wouldn't read and having to get that stuff out is part of one's growth as a writer.

I know definitive points in my life and in relationships because of my songs. I write my music so that I'll never be bored of it.

Writing has... been to me like a bath from which I have risen feeling cleaner, healthier, and freer.

I was 19 years when I got into acting training classes at a TV station and then I found a way to express my feelings. My father left us when I was a kid and I just shut down all of my emotions. I wasn't talkative; I didn't know how to communicate with people. I tried to separate from people. After I got into the classes I found a way of expressing myself through characters. I can cry behind a character, I can shout behind a character and it became a relief. And it's fun.

The first song I wrote was the first song I remember thinking, "Well, maybe I can do something here." The very first one. By the second one I knew I could do something.

I clearly remember writing songs [when I was young] and the power that it gave me of feeling like somebody. My whole life changed when I wrote those songs, even before anyone ever heard them. It wasn't a commercial thing.

It's always nice for me to get to explore somebody who's feeling that and then does something with it and takes it in a different direction or does something with it. It feels very powerful. It helps me with my own.

Sometime in my second year at Brown [University], I took an acting class. And the lightbulb went off for me. I fell in love with it. I realized that everything I was afraid of about myself, all my fears, could be used in that world.

Writing music and lyrics that mean something personal to me. It's an exciting, intense, cathartic, this-is-who-I-am experience.

What I became a comedian for was to get my art out. To get some of these feelings and things I had on my chest out. I don't care if people believe them, listen to them, change their ways, or think, or any of that kind of crap. I'm interested in showing off. I'm the same kid from sixth grade who stood up and said "watch this."

I'm learning more about life when I'm playing too, and writing music. I'm learning more about life, the connection.

At this point in my life, I'm probably not gonna be able to stop writing because it's gonna help me be able to do what I need to do.

I became an actor to escape my own personality. Acting is the most therapeutic thing in the world. You see, through acting you come full circle in your personality and, oh, what a grand time you can have along the way being wonderful people through your characters...I think all the courage that I may lack personally I have as an actor.

I don't know if I would call it therapy, but filmmaking is really the only thing I know how to do. For me, making movies is a way to bring on change for myself, and I really enjoy that part.

I used to sing like Nat King Cole. I mean he was the guy when I was comin' up, and you know, man, people used to say of me, "Damn, he sure do sound like Nat King Cole." But there was a day, and luckily for me it was early, when I woke up and asked myself, "Well, when are the ask me to sing because I sound like me?" So my advice is, never do anything that you don't like.

Dramatic reading and writing for kids can open a window to individuality and to expression that nothing else does, because all of a sudden the pressure is off and they just bring themselves to the table.

I was writing tons of music in my spare time. I might be on location somewhere, and I'd go home and I'd have my guitar and my little keyboard or something and write music. Or if I was at home, on my piano. I've always been a late bloomer with a lot of things, just in general, so I think this was something that needed to come to fruition in this particular way.