Bill Callahan Quotes

A lot of my work comes from my life experiences.

My act has always reflected what's going on in my life.

I've found that in now having experienced what it's like to make records and just through growing up in general that you should be expressive about what's affecting you instead of trying to sing about a subject just for the sake of other people getting something from it.

Art is that which comes to a man, and stands between himself and an implacable witness: the work.

I'm sick of being self-referential. I don't want to do any more songs that can be accused of being personal.

The things in my songs are the edited highlights of my life. I don't go seeking out strange sexual experiences every day of the week.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction - they're always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

I'm not really interested in myself in my writing. I can't see myself in the songs, even though I know different parts of me are there.

A lot of my songs are about things that concern me personally, not a heightened version of myself or any of the characters that I play.

I would say that 'After the Storm' is much more informed by my personal life than my other movies.

I think 'Lost Boy' is more of a metaphor for oneself. When I listen to that song, I don't picture someone else. I kind of wrote it from a very honest place.

Your music essentially reflects everything you do, everything you've been through, in the deepest part of you.

All I can promise myself and everyone else is that this record is a snapshot of thisperiod in my life. It will be that by default.

I have never dissected my personal life. What sense would it make?

I have been taking every step toward the future every day through making many paintings and sculptures with my deep emotion hidden in my life.

I'm not really an autobiographical writer, though I use lots of stuff from my life to make my stories seem real. But when I actually write about myself, I get very confused.

Certainly, I devote my energy to both telling my personal life story and seeking self- obliteration. However, I will not destroy myself through art.

I write - though perhaps it sounds pretentious to say so - to make a clearing in the wilderness, to find out what I care about and what exactly to make of it.

I found I am not an anarchistic form creator; I'm intuitive, and I'm trying to figure out a way to explore human fragility.

I'm doing things that are more artistic again, more close to the material that I love. I don't disparage those things that I did. They're just not as much reflective of who I am.

It's such a private thing - 'my process' - I can just say that the work that I do is like therapy between me and the character.

The first record I spent five years writing and it was an amalgamation of all the things that happened in my life from the time I was fifteen to the time I was twenty.

I've been so in my moment about my life.

If you're open to it, New Orleans will teach you about yourself, but if you want to hide from who you really are, the city will help you do that, too.

I'm interested in trying to explore what I think is the truth at a given time in my life, and part of the process of being honest is - in my mind - talking about the idea that you're watching a movie. You're sitting here watching a movie. And I like that. It appeals to me intellectually, and also in a way I can't even explain.