James Mercer Quotes

There's a certain darkness to Slipknot, but at the same time, there's a very strong dose of positivity. Stone Sour is the same way. There's a certain melancholy that comes with the slower stuff, but at the end of the day there's also that other side that is very positive. It's all how you deliver.

A garden is to be a world unto itself, it had better make room for the darker shades of feeling as well as the sunny ones.

I found more joy in sorrow than you could find in joy.

Sad music, I always thought, is more beautiful than other music. But at the same time, I am in my personal life a very happy guy. I have a sense of humor. I am not the kind of depressed guy all the time brooding. No. I am very enthusiastic about things.

I wanted to do music that was a little more sentimental, emotional, and serene - completely different from the party music I was doing.

I always wanted to write a sad song that sounds happy. I think everyone can relate to this emotion.

Melancholy and utopia are heads and tails of the same coin.

Everything is so sad and so wonderful.

I've always had a tendency to keep an emergency exit in a song. I can't remember ever writing a song that is completely and thoroughly depressing; there's always been a way out somehow. A sense of hope in song, regardless of the subject matter.

'Turtle' is one of our favorite ballad songs that we've written. It is very quiet but also so bright.

My favorite pieces that I've written, either for St. Lucia or for myself, have always had a transporting quality to them, where they take you out of the moment and somewhere positive that feels nostalgic and happy but sad at the same time.

Not everyone wants to be in misery in every song!

I've always been into super upbeat, cute, uplifting progressions, but at the same time, I'm also a very dark person. I really like both sides, and I feel like I'm always trying to find some middle ground with music or style or anything that I do.

Life has to be everything. It can't be all sad. It can't be all peaches and cream. Because the lows have you appreciate the highs. And the highs give you perspective on the lows. If it's not everything, it becomes flat or mundane.

I've never been a confessional writer.

You can't appreciate the good times without the bad ones.

I have played some very kind and loving character. I don't know why I'm so good at playing bad. I really don't.

As high as we have mounted in delight, In our dejection do we sink as low.

I still don’t know if this is a good quality or a bad one, to be able to be in the moment and then step out of it.

There is a gravity which is not austere nor captious, which belongs not to melancholy nor dwells in contraction of heart: but arises from tenderness and hangs upon reflection.

The Japanese have a word - aware - which, in my understanding is, again, that full range - both the joy and the sorrow of our life. One does not exist without the other. And I really feel that.

Half of me knows too much to be carefree. But the other half knows enough to be grateful.

Many things have been written, including by me, linking humor and pain. Mostly, in my case, the humor part keeps me sane. If I spent all my hours writing things like "Fatal Distraction," I'd become a brooding, erratic melancholic. I'd be Raskolnikov.