Joe Swanberg Quotes

My relationship with my father is fine. Every relationship has its ups and downs because bad things happen in all relationships. But for me, I can only write about what I'm feeling in the moment and something that actually happened to me.

I realized that even though I had this urge, this longing, to write about other people, in order for it to be emotionally gripping, I needed to be in there somehow.

The main thing going on around intimacy is that we've developed a lot of strategies so we'll be a desirable package.

It's easier to write from my own life, and it's also more fun. I always write about relationships, for instance, whether they're romantic relationships, friendships, encounters... there's always a lesson to be learned from them.

Knowing is the most profound kind of love, giving someone the gift of knowledge about yourself.

In real life, I don't fall in love with the guy who wines and dines me, I fall in love with the flaws and the humanity.

That really was a lot of the appeal of 'Rumours.' The music was wonderful, but the music was also authentic because it was two couples breaking up and writing dialogue to each other. It was also appealing because we were rising to the occasion to follow our destiny.

'Before I Ever Met You' was the first one to come out and that just dives into the grit, and it's pretty graphic about a relationship. For my first song, it was very special the way it happened, because I didn't really hold anything back, and people responded to it.

Whenever I'm talking about relationships, it's always at least three things. It's my relationship with myself, my relationship with God or an idea, and then usually somebody, a real person. I try to operate on all three levels at the same time, and it's difficult, but I never want to have a break-up song or something like that.

Then relationship happens. Before that it is just an empty name. Relationship cannot happen before the egos are gone.

As a writer, as a storyteller, you have to have your emotions close, and the older I've gotten, the less I've worried about not displaying emotions.

If you have a built-in level of respect and trust and openness to essentially be yourself, it allows for a deeper uncensored communication [with your partner].

You have to have a patience for relationships.

If I found out some gal was trying to steal my guy, I'd want to give her a black eye! Instead, I wrote this song. At the time I was writing each song [on this album], you could figure out the frame of mind I was in by listening closely. With every song I've ever recorded, I'm in it. I wouldn't write about it if I wasn't in it.

Even if the role is very far away from me, to try and make it as nakedly me as possible is an intriguing notion.

Communication is the root of marital success from which a strong union can grow, and noncommunicatio n is the rock on which the ship will bash out her keel.

[Marriage] is the merciless revealer, the great white searchlight turned on the darkest places of human nature.

My writing is authentic, and whatever happens in my life is what I write about.

I go through the arc of a relationship with every single painting that I do.

True love brings up everything - you're allowing a mirror to be held up to you daily.

There are certain topics songwriters stay away from because it's hard to go there. I didn't sit down and go, 'I want to write something about my dad now.'

Everything I've written is personal - it's the only way I know how to write.

If I ever wrote a script myself, it would be strongly emotional material.

The dynamic of a relationship changes when one person gets sober.

It is only when we no longer compulsively need someone that we can have a real relationship with them.