Ezra Koenig Quotes

There are certainly good examples of incredibly brilliant, beautiful music that has been made commercially available and sold everywhere. But I would say that, for the most part, quantity certainly does not speak well for quality.

I think any band we played with would be a weird match. We're on our own, a little out there, but it's a good thing. I think we're complimentary to each other.

If you didn't have patents, no one would bother to spend money on research and development. But with patents, if someone has a good idea and a competitor can't copy it, then that competitor will have to think of their own way of doing it. So then, instead of just one innovator, you have two or three people trying to do something in a new way.

I love doing collaborations - it's always good to do something that's out the box.

A lot of producers and creative types want to see you be you. Throw something else out there and show them where you would take this part. A lot of them are launching shows for the first time, so they've got a lot riding on this, too, and they want you to be their flight.

I think if you're too concerned with being cool or hip or liked, you can't really make good TV because sincerity and coolness are opposites.

I think Prince should open up a little more to other artists. Just because we love Prince. Especially the old stuff - we love him to death. But if he opened up he would be something to deal with. Imagine Kanye West producing a Prince track? It would be banoodles!

A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.

It's unfortunate we've never been just songwriters.

If I find cool, open-minded people, want to do unique one-of-a-kind kind of project, I'll do it as long as I can.

Dave and I had been song writers in Nashville, trying to get around, out hustling, trying to meet people. We randomly met Hillary out in town one night. She said she was a singer. I asked her if she would like to write some songs with Dave and me, and a week later she came over. Instantaneously we had this chemistry.

We Americans love original ideas. But truly, there are already plenty of good ones out there, ours for the taking. If I were too proud to copy the ideas of others, I likely wouldn't have even a fraction of my current success.

They tell me I produced songs. I just stood in the back, wore a good suit and said, Yeah, that's happening.

If you are looking for a producer, try to contact established producers. Don't let the fear of theft paralyze you, or you will never get anywhere with it.

People have become less discriminating listeners, which is tragic, really. There's a lot of emperor's new clothes out there, whether they're female or male solo acts. That bothers me. It's hard to break through, and it's like climbing Mount Everest if you actually do.

I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. It was bold, unheard of.

There's nothing more superficial to do than to paint a beautiful woman. The most beautiful portraits in art were of ugly women. If you paint Brigitte Bardot, it's a disaster. Sunsets, you have to stay away from sunsets. You paint a sunset, you are in great danger.

I've done a lot of collabs, but most of the time, it's me on someone else's track.

Even if I did work with a big producer, you try not to do the same kind of records as everybody else.

One of the dangers of making a movie about young people is it's potentially trite.

It's fun to be creative and innovative and come up with something crazy. So I need people to work with who are not going to be afraid to take it to the left a bit.

Although knowledge of structure is helpful, real creativity comes from leaps of faith in which you jump to something illogical. But those leaps form the memorable moments in movies and plays.

Never compete, create.

Steven Soderbergh really likes Irréversible, that's about all I can tell you. About the making, well, it was a very particular situation, because those people all know each other, and they're all big stars. I felt like the little French guy, really. And I was very flattered to be called on that, of course, but I felt like if I didn't find something to be a little original, different, particular in the movie, I would just disappear.

When you're working with other artists, it's often a mix of your ideas with somebody else's, which can be extremely fruitful. But then it's also interesting to present the completely undiluted vision of what I imagine music could be. I care about both my own music and collaboration equally, and I pretty much split my time equally, as well.