Bryce Dessner Quotes

I've written songs everywhere, and I think the place does matter.

I've always felt writing a song was a bit like going on location. That's true in an almost literal sense. Where you are seeps in somehow.

If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live - the way you live - then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art.

At the end of the day, I think that I'm making music for me as that 12-year-old kid in front of my boombox every day. I try to think about, if I'm that little kid, what would he like?

I think it's important for fans to know that but if I'm doing something that inspires me musically then I think it will inspire someone else too.

Genius is not only a what or a who, it is a where. It is grounded in a place every single time.

For whatever you're doing, for your creative juices, your geography's got a hell of a lot to do with it. You really have to be in a good place, and then you have to be either on your way there or on your way from there.

A lot of people are really quick to say, "That song sounds like this." Or you - "He's tryin' to sound like this." And I'm always like, "You're damn right I am. That's how - that's why we're all here." You know, we all grew up idolizing another musician. That's how this works. That's how music is created.

The source is always me, but when the inspiration is an amazing idea or entity, it gives the process of music making a very beautiful route to proceed on.

I just watched a James Brown video of him singing 'I Feel Good,' and then I kind of just copied off his moves. But I couldn't do them properly, so they turned into my own moves.

Lemaitre has been one of my inspirations ever since I started making music.

The way I did the first album... the way I wrote 'Church'... was just to trust my instincts with the music and let it kind of do what it does.

Sometimes, I sit with my guitar and start playing... something or the other pops into my head... Basically, I write whatever that comes to my mind. I've written a lot of songs, but they are lying in my cupboard... I mean to do something about them someday.

A lot of our songs are based in reality but imagined or using fictional characters as a way to write about something. I think inspiration comes from anything and everything, and it's filtered through our brains, and it comes out sounding like our band.

I try to take whatever I can from the songs I grew up listening to, these vibed-out pop numbers, and make them my own in some weird way.

I was driving home and thinking about what rock and roll should be about. 'Adventure and Trouble!' I thought. I sang the song first and then added the chords later.

I feel like Prince's artistry inspired me as far as staying true to myself and my artistry and what is important to me in my life and applying, you know, all the things that I ever been through into my music, the same way he kinda did in 'Purple Rain.'

I usually start with a lyric and see where that takes me.

I'm just writing less of my own music lately - I go in and out of phases a lot. Sometimes there are these accidents that just sort of happen, that are kind of waiting around the corner. I guess Modest Mouse was one of them.

'Feel It Still' came around pretty much as organically as you can put a song together.

You can't help but have ideas when you're inspired musically.

If you're sitting in a place like Martha's Vineyard, I don't think you're going to write a song about a ski resort.

That is the most important thing to me, what happens behind the closed doors in the studio and makes me an artist.

I know I idolise someone like Billie Holiday, but I don't look at her and think I have to imitate her lifestyle, to try and sing like she did.

I usually know the general emotion of a song, or the general feeling of it, and then I think I just get so excited by the act of recording. I love that process so much that I feel like if I knew exactly what I wanted I'd arrive at something too soon.