Justin Vernon Quotes

You don’t need help to write a song. You just need to get over this experience that bummed you out so bad. The relationship you were in is over, it was over a long time ago, and you need to move on.

'Padman' was about my early life and struggles, including my wife calling me a psycho and leaving me.

That's what I realized: if I did get her back somehow, she wouldn't fill the hole that losing her created.

What I write is very personal, but not autobiographical. It's more 'thematically personal' - what's up in my life in terms of themes at the moment.

Well, I believe that life is very complicated. And in a way, the only way you can show life in a truthful way is to show how complicated it is as an individual, but also your relation between a complicated life and the complications you have inside you.

I have definitely written a happy song about someone and then we ended up splitting up, but you have to put those kind of things to the back of your mind and tell yourself that it's a good song and it works on the album.

When you go through heartbreak, you just do the things that get you by. Eventually, you realise it's about making the most of life.

Whatever's going on with me at the time of writing is going to find its way into the piece. If that doesn't happen, then what the hell am I doing? So if I'm writing 'Inglourious Basterds,' and I'm in love with a girl and we break up, that's going to find its way into the piece.

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.

Lyrically, you know, most of the things on 'Rumours' were very autobiographical and very much conversations the three writers were having with other members of the band.

An artist could have a really big relationship, and then they break up, and any song after that, people are automatically going to assume that that song is about that person.

You know that first love that leaves you? You never forget that, especially if you're a songwriter. I must have gotten nine songs out of that girl.

After my divorce, I took some time off from having a romantic life to begin the tough work of figuring out where I'd gone wrong and what on Earth I could do to understand how to be a whole person in a relationship.

My boys asked me to write beautiful letters for their ex-girls so they could get them back. I thought, 'I should be writing songs for myself.'

It’s been a full week since she left and all you’ve done is sulk like a dying cow. (Kish)

Sometimes, two people have to fall apart to realize how much they need to fall back together

She was the epic crush of my childhood. She was the tragedy that made me look inside myself and see my corrupt heart. She was my sin and my salvation, come back from the grave to change me forever. Again. Back then, when she sat on my bed and told me she loved me, I wanted her as much as I have ever wanted anything.

We are two different people, Ethan. Just because you could never decide which one of us you were in love with does not make us interchangeable.

Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order.

It definitely sometimes feels like a suit that I wish I could zip off. But I don’t feel bad about any of the things I’ve gone through, whether it’s divorce or breakups or anything like that, because that’s all part of the life journey, and I have those experiences just like anyone else. And I think it deepens what you tap into creatively.

The truth is, sometimes too much can happen in a relationship, and then there's nothing anyone can do or say. It's broken.

Recently abandoned women can be complicated.

When you do these things, you sort of take the journey. The journey is all about how I can interweave the Oscar Wilde story, the story of Salome, the play itself and what it is, what it contains, and my journey as an actor, as a director, as a filmmaker, as a person struggling with whatever I'm struggling with - my own celebrity, my own life. This is semi-autobiographical in terms of my commitment to this kind of thing.