Ben Folds Quotes

I wouldn't say I'm that social... I'm either sailing my boat by myself or living in some small place.

People call me a hermit. But I'm happy.

My experience of ships is that on them one makes an interesting discovery about the world. One finds one can do without it completely.

If I could, I would not do anything else. I'd just be in the studio for my whole life. I would never go to parties, events, and red carpets. I would rather just be in the studio for the whole time. I don't even care. Nobody has to know what I look like. I just want to make music.

Because I was an only child, I don't like many people around, and that's why I don't have any servants.

It's not like I'm hanging out at shopping malls or going to celebrity golf tournaments. I'm so in my own little world. I got my dog, my music, my brother, a couple of friends.

When young writers approach me for advice, I remind them, as gently as I can, that they are on their own, with no help available anywhere. Which is how it should be.

We lived on isolated farms and ranches, far from anybody, and when I was young I knew very few other kids, so I lived to a great extent in my imagination.

I thought to live on an island was like living on a boat. Islands intrigue me. You can see the perimeters of your world. It's a microcosm.

I'm a provincial. I live very much like a hermit: reading, listening to music, working in the cutting room, writing, commercial work - which doesn't take up that much time.

I think there is a very powerful wish that we all have of being self-contained and having sort of opted out or choosing to remove ourselves from society and to have no ties and no obligations, and even no possessions. To be free in a particular way.

I tend to be a bit of a hermit. A bit monkish. I like to tune out the context.

I basically grew up in the backwoods.

I just keep to myself and live in the country and visit the cities.

I suppose we do live a pretty isolated life.

I don't go out. I work, go racing, then go to my shed and make things.

I love to be a hermit.

I wasn't afraid of being poor. I didn't want to live in a big house. I'm the perfect size for poetry. I can move around.

Someone who goes with a half a loaf of bread to a small place that fits like a nest around him, someone who wants no more, who is not himself longed for by anyone else. He is a letter to everyone. You open it. It says, Live.

Reducing your life down to three pairs of jeans, two skirts, a couple of shirts, and a few pairs of shoes was so nice for me. I really loved living in this tiny room where I didnt have space for anything. It sounds really lame, but it made me feel a lot more free, because I just didnt have as many choices.

The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.

Come away with me, he said, we will live on a desert island. I said, I am a desert island. It was not what he had in mind.

When you're on a boat, it is this tiny little island where you have to be completely self-sufficient.

The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I'd never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to. We'd just make small talk, play soccer together. When something bothered me, I didn't talk with anyone about it. I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and took action alone. Not that I really felt lonely. I thought that's just the way things are. Human beings, in the final analysis, have to survive on their own.

The things men come to eat when they are alone are, I suppose, not much stranger than the men themselves.... A writer years ago told me of living for five months on hen mash.