David Berman Quotes

I felt that with 'In A Perfect World' I was still kind of finding myself - not just as a musician, but also in love and in life.

When you're seventeen to early twenties, that's the time you're trying to work out who you are. If you're trying to make some kind of artistic or creative impact, that's the age when you start to figure out how to do that.

I feel like I wasn't making music that meant anything to me until I was 26 years old, so I'm realizing that sometimes it takes three years or five years to understand what the point of even making music together is.

My first album was me finding myself and my voice, finding how I sing. I was rolling with the punches because everything was new to me.

I am pretty embroiled in moving on and moving forward with music.

In my thirties, I felt I had hold of one of the reins some of the time.

It wasn't until Duotones that I felt my true voice come out.

I've also become much more the musician I've always wanted to be.

For me, 'Rent' was all about coming out of myself, finding out who I was, learning the power I could have as a performer. And 'Wicked' was about harnessing all that strength.

Everything I have experienced in my life helps form who I am today, and I would not change or forget any of it.

I didn't get on TV until I was 30, which is really fortunate because you are who you are at that point.

I really think I've found me finally in the music. You know, I had put an album out before, 'Embrace Me,' and it's been seven years since that. So I was discovering who I was. And I still am discovering, but I think now I know a little bit more of who I am. So that's what's pushing me.

I really feel like I found myself, and when I found myself, I found the music along with it.

That song didn't just happen. It grew out of my experiences. 'American Pie' was part of my process of self-awakening: a mystical trip into my past.

You are who you are at this moment because of everything that's ever happened to you, everything that you carried forward for yourself.

I feel as though I came to music with something to say. It wasn't like that when I was younger. I didn't have the ability to articulate what it was I wanted to say.

I feel like I've been around for such a long time, as a writer and as an artist, that I need to sort of speak to the way that my perception of the world has sort of changed.

Every role that one does - at least, that's what happens in my case - becomes a sort of therapy.

I'm a late bloomer. Even in high school, everyone else was charging ahead, and I didn't come into my own until very late. I feel that's true in cinema, too. I didn't even start 'Metropolitan' until I was 37.

I was very young when I did 'I Blame Coco,' and I never really recognized that sound as me.

I feel like I've mastered Dave East. For a long time I was trying to figure out who I was and what sound I wanted to come with.

When you have a lot of people telling you what you are and perceiving you in a certain way, it's difficult to find your own identity.

Writing has certainly helped me explore about 20,000 versions of my authentic self. I suppose that's what most writers discover if they write long enough: there are a lot of selves roaming around in there.

I think every artist's next work will reflect a new chapter in their autobiography. Each album tells a story about where they were at during a particular period and how they have evolved.

I think the narratives on 'Trans,' 'Plans,' and 'Narrow Stairs' moved away from the way I wrote on the first couple of records, which was a lot more impressionistic. I was writing those songs in my early 20s, so I thought I was being more clear than I actually was.