Jon Hopkins Quotes

My music has to be funny and sad and happy and loving; it's gotta have it all. When somebody's just too dark all the time, it's just drama. Or if somebody's too funny? Well, I like being too funny sometimes.

As an actor, I'm constantly striving to find the darkness in the lighter characters and the lightness in the darker characters.

In any work you do, you can be profound one minute, and then you be superficial the next, and you can be smart and insightful and then insipid. There can be room for all that.

I love emotional, intense stuff; it's easier to grab onto than just being simple. Being simple and relaxed can be the hardest thing. It can be easier to get your hooks into something big.

I like the hot-cold, the sugar-salt, being able to play over-the-top and dramatic things - in the same film. Just as in my life, I can be very funny and at other times almost extinguished.

It is important for me that a certain depth and variety of both exist next to each other. I am very careful not to sacrifice the one for the other.

Dramatically, I like darkness, I like conflict - but I don't see the world as defined by them.

I just love doing broader work - I always get asked to do fairly heavy-duty, intense dramas and interesting, psychologically intense characters. But you know, it's nice to make people laugh sometimes.

I feel I need a lot of contrast, so I have all these things happening, but they're all necessary to make me feel satisfied. It's got to be this big pot happening, with everything boiling at once.

I think people appreciate a songwriter who shows different sides. The whole angst thing is cool, but if that's all you've got, it's just boring. Everything I write, whether it's happy or sad, has a sense of humor to it.

There's more depth to Lionel. What I am finding so interesting about playing him is there's all these different layers. I prefer playing Lionel because he's a human being.

My philosophy? Simplicity plus variety.

There's a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast.

There are notes between notes, you know.

You can drain the life and nuances and complexity out of things by homogenizing them to make everything harmoniously dull, flat, conflict-free, strife-free.

Life mixes tones all the time.

I never want readers to be comfortable, to feel like we're in a comedy or a drama. Life is never just one of those things. Life is a balance of all those things.

Counterpoint is difficult. I have been doing it since the beginning of my career. But it is not just taking any opposite. It is finding the right opposite.

'Nice Guys' has darkness in it and parts that are kind of odd, but there are also parts where it's heartfelt and soulful. You can switch back and forth.

I want people to understand balance. I might make a banger, and that's the way that I feel, and then I may want to make a song that's really deep.

Emotion is a full range of a spectrum, like colours. It's not just anger. How are you going to get that out with just a guitar and screaming? You need to explore everything else.

One of the ways to use your depth is to play with speed.

There's light and dark in all things, you know?

With everything I do, I strive for a balance of tone, where it's not just one thing.

I think for something to be beautiful, it has to have some darkness in it; otherwise, it's just pretty. And pretty does not interest me at all.