Mike Rutherford Quotes

I look for subjects who have stories to tell - who are looking to tell something.

I write about my experiences, so a lot of times, I do write about people.

I really do like listening to stuff that's happened to other people. I guess that's why I like to read.

Women are storytellers, they are communicators. They'll go and sit around a table and talk about their first date, their first smoke, their first lipstick, whatever it is. Those rituals of life, marriages and death aren't part of the language of men.

I want to write about my experiences since 'Speedbumps.'

I think that even though some of the things on 'Humans of New York' are kind of very personal and very revealing, I think the discomfort with sharing that tends to be overwritten by the appreciation of being able to distill the experience of your life into a story and share it with other people.

I've played a lot of people where someone will say, 'This is based on my sister, and such and such happened.' But I don't think I ever played someone who, 'This is their name, and this is their address, and this is what they looked like.'

There are autobiographical elements to the albums, and when I write, I always reference my own life as well as other things, so I'm just like any novelist or any fiction writer who tells stories.

Everybody's got a story on their beards. I guess it's just a way of finding common ground with people you otherwise might not know.

I thought movies were handed down by God. I knew that theater was made by people because I saw the people in front of me, but movies seemed like they were delivered, wholly made, from Zeus's head or something.

I love telling people's stories.

If it's just me on stage telling stories for, like, an hour, that's great. That's fine. But like a sandcastle on the beach, it gets washed away at night. It's so much more powerful if we can all share our narratives and doorstep moments and make us feel a little less alone. I'm just trying to use social media and new media as a way to capture that.

My inspiration for songs is just everyday life. I just write down words about things that have happened to me, people I've met.

Some of the songs are inspired by personal things that have happened. Others have been inspired by other people's stories, you know, like someone that witnesses something and so I tell the story through my own eyes. And some songs are just about how I feel about the world and others about the places that we have travelled to.

I write about personal experiences.

It is very, very important that people understand that you can tell different kinds of stories, and they do, related to gay and lesbian issues - especially when you know the people behind them.

Everyone has material about cats, and everyone has material about family and what they think about their government or childhood.

Being able to tell people's stories - this is the most exciting job in the world to me.

All my songs are things that have happened to me.

I'm super excited to have people hear little stories about my life, the lives of my friends, people I know.

Even though I was super personal with 'American Teen,' I want to tap in and not just tell my own stories but tell the stories of other people - so that I can help as many people as possible.

All my stories are mainly slice-of-life and rooted to real issues and situations that I have experienced myself.

The stories in the songs come from my real life.

I was thinking about it: so many of my stories are about my family life, not about being related to a lot of famous people. That's my grandma, that's my mama, my daddy, my aunt, my uncle, my stepdaddy. I'd probably tell them even if they weren't well known.

I like to dim the lights and talk about the ghosts I've known and invite other people to tell me their stories.