Trey Anastasio Quotes

I have no choice in what direction my music goes, honestly, as all I get is what I'm given. I start writing the songs, and they start presenting themselves the way they want to be heard.

Acting and making music are quite complementary. Acting relies on someone else's writing and direction; writing music or lyrics doesn't. But they are both creative and personal in completely different ways.

My talent is definitely a gift. I don't understand where it comes from. I don't play an instrument, and I never went to school for music production, but I know exactly how a song should sound and how to give an artist direction.

Usually, the music inspires the lyrics. The lyrics just sort of fall off like a bunch of crumbs from the melody. That's all I want them to be - crumbs. I don't want to work any kind of fabricated message.

All laws have unintended consequences.

I'm a band dictator.

No one is mediating aesthetic choices on an OPN album other than myself.

Angelo Badalamenti brought me into the world of music and that's really what gave me permission to get into it even though I'm not a musician. It's just an intuitive thing for me.

The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.

A strange side effect of sudden success is the sense that if you can succeed in one field, then it might well be worth trying to succeed in another.

I've done a lot of writing for other people, other projects, and what I tried to do with the music I'm putting out for myself is kind of keep it where I'm doing everything.

Most people think a song is a song - three minutes, and you're done. I don't think this way. Songs are my wings. They're what I use to fly. It's very important for me to put everything in the right place.

I'm not going to let anyone tell me that I can't perform, that I'm not artistic.

I feel like there are things that inspire the music, and then there's the music itself. I don't feel like I always need to force them together.

One of my mottos for 'Currents' was 'Give the song what it deserves.' How would this song flourish? If the song could tell me what it wants, what can I give it? I tried not to dictate it with any sensible or logical decisions.

I don't let the fans rule my world and rule what I do, or how I do it, because as artists we give what we give and you receive how you want to receive.

Sometimes you don't see the result that you expect.

Watching Rachel Maddow is like going to Target. You went in for milk, but you left with shampoo, candles, and the entire history of the Byzantine Empire. 'I didn't need this.'

You get to tell your story through your music if you choose to.

Obviously spending my teenage years in music, and in popular music, I wanted to continue this career, but in a way that allows me to dictate it and create it myself as opposed to relying on third party or more corporate decision making.

I don't necessarily think the way people do, but that's not my problem. My problem is not to reinforce or destroy any ideas anyone might have about me, how I do what I do, what my intentions are, the way that I do it. My only job, as far as I can see, is to do the music that I want to do.

The wild thing is that when I'm in the band, I can control my destiny with four other guys. As a composer sitting in the audience, you can throw good vibes at everybody, but you can't control anybody's destiny, so it's really unsettling.

I like working with directors I respect, who give me freedom but also give me a good base from which to work.

I have people telling me what I can and can't do, what music I can and can't make.

Oneohtrix Point Never is total freedom to do what I think is right.