Beck Quotes

For the longest time, I didn't even want to admit I was serious about music. Before the Shins, I would tell myself, 'Oh, I'm going to figure something out someday.' I had this romantic vision of being this old dude maybe making guitars or something.

I always envisioned myself being a rapper and being in the game and having success, but you never know what it feels like or how you're going to be when you're there.

I still don't know if I can write songs. I don't think anyone ever knows if they can write songs.

I don't really know who I am as an actor: the best thing would be to experiment with it for the next 30 years and never really find out.

A lot of the younger kids now can rap, but they're scared of the crowd. Mastery of that stage is an MC. I don't know if you've seen any great MCs on stage but when you do it's like wow, this is more than the words to rhymes.

I couldn't do rap. I was trying. I don't know how. I'm not good enough to know.

I guess I am a rapper. It's weird to be called that, or tell someone that's your profession.

I often thought I was in the wrong business. I was pretty seriously thinking of tossing it in before I shot Shine. I do not know why. I was pretty restless, I had been through a bad period of stress induced anxiety - panic attacks - and I was not sure of what I wanted to do.

Anytime you write something, you go through so many phases. You go through the 'I'm a Fraud' phase. You go through the 'I'll Never Finish' phase. And every once in a while you think, 'What if I actually have created what I set out to create, and it's received as such?'

I've had fans and friends in the business say, 'Oh man, you've made it.' I still don't feel like I've made it. I still feel like I'm as good as my last show, as good as my last single.

After 'Real Live Woman,' I wasn't sure I'd ever want to make another record.

I got started as a producer first, but really, I feel my beats had more life than anyone could rap on them.

I never was a person that said, 'I'm gonna be a rapper.' I thought I would be a doctor. I just knew how to rap, and it was a cool thing to do, so I started doing it for fun.

As far as rapping goes, as long as you are telling the truth and you have a good flow, then you win.

In 1997, I thought I'd never make another record.

I always say a rapper is like a halfback in the NFL. You got about seven years, then it's a wrap.

I'm a singer. I'm a musician. I'm a writer. Maybe - I don't know - I couldn't give a child what it needed.

There was this moment, particularly after I had my first child, where I felt like, 'I don't know if I'll ever make a record, or if this is always going to be something just floating around in my head.'

I know a beat is good for me when I can just start rapping. It's usually hard for me to do that.

When I was in art school, I thought art was something I would learn how to do, and then I would just do it. At a certain point I realized that it wasn't going to work like that. Basically, I would have to start over every day and figure out what art was going to be.

Every time I start on a new book, I am a beginner again. I doubt myself, I grow discouraged, all the work accomplished in the past is as though it never was, my first drafts are so shapeless that it seems impossible to go on with the attempt at all, right up until the moment - always imperceptible, there, too, there is a break - when it is has become impossible not to finish it.

My friends tell me that I am an intruder, that I don't really write when I attempt poetry. But those of my friends who write in prose say that I'm no writer when I attempt prose. So really I don't know what to do, I'm in a quandary.

I'm always doubting because I've been told so much that, you're not the right look or you're not the right sound, and, you know, whether I do jazz or R&B there are always complaints.

I have no idea how I do anything. I never have. You know I just started playing guitar and started singing and started working on this act that I would call "Don McLean" when I was probably in high school. And I have been doing this for 40 years, adding songs and writing things, cobbling together albums, doing live things, you know, albums and tours. And then I have records on the charts. I have no idea how this happened.

I've always defined myself as a writer, I've never decided what it was I was gonna write. [...] I always fancied myself one, but I'm not. I'm so far from a writer.