Jason Isbell Quotes

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.

We simply write the kind of music we enjoy most and hope that our audience will enjoy it too.

I'm not trying to say I'm this artist who is all artsy and that I only write music for myself, because I don't. I write music for other people to enjoy, so I think about if it'd be an idea someone else would like.

I always try to make the music that I like and think my fans will like.

I have long begged off the question of my albums reflecting where I am 'at' personally. There is more inaccuracy in that approach than accuracy.

I don't have joy in watching myself, whereas, actually, I quite like listening to my own music.

I try to spend a lot of time thinking of what it is I want to say, and how I want to say it. Mainly because I know what it's like as a fan to hear music that is just exactly what I needed.

Music is for people. The word 'pop' is simply short for popular. It means that people like it. I'm just a normal jerk who happens to make music. As long as my brain and fingers work, I'm cool.

If you write something that's personal, there's going to be elements of yourself in it.

I think of myself as a guy who tries to write screenplays and now has tried to direct one. Anything more than that is meaningless and it gets in the way of being a real human being.

When I write a book... it's the same essential approach to music as with books. It has to be something I want to hear or read. Hopefully the audience comes along, since that's the only way you can write righteously. I have to ask, 'What do I want to hear?' not 'What do people want to hear?'

I think my job is to try and be as honest as I can with what is in my mind and how I feel - I think that's what you're supposed to do, if you're a good writer. So I try to do that. I know I do that. I do do that.

I can only speak for myself and my own music, because that is what I am most familiar with, and I write about things that I am living or experiencing.

The writer needs to react to his or her own internal universe, to his or her own point of view. If he or she doesn't have a personal point of view, it's impossible to be a creator.

No, it's not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

If you think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.

I write what I'd like to read and just hope that, along the way, others might like to read them, too.

My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters, who sits down and has pieces of paper taped to the wall - what's going to happen in this scene, or this act. What I like is for it to be a much more scary, sloppy reflection of who I am.

I just try to make the best music that I can. People are going to label it whatever they're going to label it.

If you're making music for all the right reasons, people are going to be receptive to that and appreciate it the same way you did when your were writing it.

I've always thought that the balance between the side of my mind that knows what it is doing and the side that really hasn't got a clue has to be carefully maintained because if you write too knowingly then you get chilly, and if you write too unknowingly you write bollocks that nobody else can understand.

I'm not the best at choosing what's good and what's bad. I wouldn't even know what's a good pop song and what's a bad one. With that said, I wanted to say what's true to me. Some people might say that the Skrillex record was pop, but that was just about the chemistry between me and my boy.

Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree.

When I started off with Trainspotting, it was the way the characters came to me. That's how they sounded to me. It seemed pretentious to sound any other way. I wasn't making any kind of political statement.

I guess I'm trying to write stuff that I, as a viewer, would connect to.