Jens Lekman Quotes

Ever since I was a child, I've kept boxes and drawers and pages of things that I liked. I suppose that it constitutes a journal of sorts, but it's not in a ledger or a notebook.

The 'Colours Of My Life' album is literally a 50-year retrospective.

I wish I were one of those terribly clever people who, when they write their autobiographies, always say, when I was fifteen months old I distinctly remember my Aunt Fanny saying to me, etc.

One thing I wish I could tell my younger self: take photos of everyday life, not special occasions; later, that's what will be interesting to you.

When I was in elementary school, I used to write letters to myself. I'd write letters and go 'Dear Kristen-at-16-years-old, happy birthday. I hope you're doing something.'

The way I evolved was playing straight-ahead jazz into playing more fusion-type stuff just because I was young enough to get into it. As I get older, I find myself coming back to where I kind of started.

I haven't had a chance to decorate my dressing room yet, but I have these pictures of myself as a kid that I want to put up because I said, 'I really want to make sure that I take that kid with me on this journey.' I want him to experience this.

There's always those few people that are like, 'Why don't you play any of the material off your first two records?' And I'm like, 'For the same reason that I don't play with G.I. Joe dolls anymore.' It's like, 'I'm a grown-up.' I wrote that music when I was a kid.

A lot of the songs that I wrote during 'Pt. 1' and 'Pt. 2' are the first songs that I ever wrote that sounded like that. I was in this phase - a certain creative space in my life - personally and musically.

I've started to see records as just a snapshot, a portrait of where you were at at that time. And if you're comfortable with that, sometimes it's like an old high school year book picture - it makes you blush a little bit, but you gotta learn to really appreciate each stage of your life and where you're at.

I don't think I listen to anything that I did when I was 17. I've changed a great deal.

At 68 I'm every age I ever was. I always think of that. I'm not just 68. I'm also 55 and 21 and three. Oh especially three.

The child is in me still and sometimes not so still.

I love you. I know the real you too. You think I don't but how easily you forget I was the one who bailed you out of trouble over and over again as kids. I didn't ask the perfect Ashton to be my girlfriend when I was fourteen years old. I asked the only Ash I'd ever known. You changed all on your own. I'm not going to lie. I was proud of the girl you had become. My world was complete. I had the perfect family, perfect girl, perfect future. I let myself forget the other girl you once were.

I want to write my life. I want to be able to write my life. You are a second away from saying it. You have no idea how much I love you.

After all, when we were children, when things went wrong, there wasn’t much we could do to help put it right. But now we’re adults, now we can. That’s the thing, you see? Look at us, Akira. After all this time, we can finally put things right. Remember, old chap, how we used to play those games? Over and over? How we used to pretend we were detectives searching for my father? Now we’re grown, we can at last put things right.

I'm not a grown up until everybody realises I'm a grown up. When everyone remembers me as the dirty kid singing little songs I am the dirty little kid.

I look in the mirror through the eyes of the child that was me.

...and down they forgot as up they grew.

Proust, more perspicaciously than any other writer, reminds us that the 'walks' of childhood form the raw material of our intelligence.

A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession. A true man finds so much work to do that he has no time to contemplate his yesterdays; for to-day and to-morrow are here, with their impatient tasks. The world is so busy, too, that it cannot afford to study any man's unfinished work; for the end may prove it a failure, and the world needs masterpieces.

The mother memories that are closest to my heart are the small gentle ones that I have carried over from the days of my childhood. They are not profound, but they have stayed with me through life, and when I am very old, they will still be near . . . Memories of mother drying my tears, reading aloud, cutting cookies and singing as she did, listening to prayers I said as I knelt with my forehead pressed against her knee, tucking me in bed and turning down the light. They have carried me through the years and given my life such a firm foundation that it does not rock beneath flood or tempest.

I wasn't ever unable to function, but I did realize at some point that I had built a wall between myself and my childhood by saying, "I'm so glad that's over. Nothing can ever be as bad again," without understanding that my childhood was still very much with me.

(The Song Remains The Same) is not a great film, but there's no point in making excuses. It's just a reasonably honest statement of where we were at that particular time. It's very difficult for me to watch it now, but I'd like to see it in a year's time just to see how it stands up.

Memoir is about handing over you life to someone and saying, This is what I went through, this is who I am, and maybe you can learn something from it.