Dan Deacon Quotes

My job is to look out on that world that I write about and be as honest as I possibly can about that world. If that's optimistic and uplifting, OK. If it's not, OK.

I think I've always been aware of it with my music. I think growing up basically and having a lot to deal with and just slowing down and having something to say and something to retract from, I think I just knew that what I was doing was extremely honest.

I used to just think about what my fans wanted all the time. But it just started feeling weird to me. I want to just show everyone who I am and stick to my vision. I have to trust myself.

Everyone always comes to one point in their life as an artist where you can either let your heart guide you or your ego.

I try to be a truthful artist and I try to show a level of courage. I enjoy that. I'm a messenger.

My greatest achievement is being able to write records that are real snapshots of what's going on in my life. I won't repeat myself for the sake of commerce, or to please other people.

A work will only have deep resonance if the kind of darkness I can generate is something that is resident in me already.

You bring out a lot of your own thoughts and attitudes when acting. I think a great deal of it has to do with the inner you.

I think that more and more there's a sense that the best performances I can give are the ones that are the truest to who I am. The further I move away from who I am, the worse they are.

When we are younger, we say a lot of things without often believing in them. The thoughts within you are much more important, and so often, one can't completely describe what one feels. As we grow older, we realize that there is more to love than what is expressed in the conventional sense of the terms.

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.

I have to live authentically at all times. And that's part of what makes me an artist. I'm not scared to do that.

I don't like to be entertaining. I don't like the feeling of being entertaining. If there was a musical or a comedy that was not just for entertainment but was rooted in something I could relate to on a real level, then I think I would do it.

We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are.

In the process of telling the truth about what you feel or what you see, each of us has to get in touch with himself or herself in a really deep, serious way.

So the thing is to put out music for music's sake.

We're all complex human beings, and if some of that complexity shows through, I think it's advantageous for the movie.

Books are not brands. Some people are very willing to see themselves as a brand, but you can't be a certain type of writer to a certain type of person all the time. It will kill you.

I know how I want to operate as an artist. And that is by having an honest, genuine dialogue about this kind of screwed up journey I've had that I'm so thankful for.

The challenge is how strange and different my voice sounds, so I have tried to sound like other people and tried to be something I wasn't. I have tried to be a soul singer because someone else thought that a good idea. Not because I did.

I'm just writing about people. People are dark and complicated. I'm trying to tell the truth; that's all that I do.

Basically, I think that there are some characters that you can just allow the truth of your character as a human being in your real life to come through.

Well, I just wanted to be a person. I just wanted them to keep writing me as humanistic as possible.

If you have value as an artist it's probably going to be in your capacity to let things inside you get past things that are placed there to keep you from telling the truth. The more you see things as clearly and coldly as you can, the more value you're going to have.

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