Ezra Koenig Quotes

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

I'm by no means a pianist. I think that's safe to say, but the piano, for me, I would say it's the enabler. It gave me what I needed and gives me what I need in order to write a song. And I think playing or improvising on the piano is where I feel most liberated and sort of less conscious of all my insecurities or inadequacies.

Every day I look forward to getting with my instruments, trying new things.

I like to start with an idea, but then again, I might be sitting at the keyboard, and just playing a bunch of chords that sound cool together, and something just inspires an idea from that.

When I'm at home creating music, I usually wind up laughing. It's always, like, funny - like, what the hell did I just write?

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.

Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

I used to look at composing music as problem solving. But as I get older, it's not about problem solving anymore. There are no solutions, because there are no problems. You just turn the tap and it flows out.

Nothing pleases me more than to go into a room and come out with a piece of music.

People ask what was the first piece of music I wrote. There was no first piece.

Any new ideas go into PiL. My inspiration is everything that the human being gets up to. I don't listen to any music when I'm in PiL-zone, because influences can poison your well. Otherwise, I listen to anything.

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

I just start playing music and eventually I sing something, a line of a verse or a B section or a line of a chorus, and the line that I end up singing is related to the music I'm playing, if that makes any sense. And I go from there.

I never set out to write a certain kind of song, I just play my guitar and see if I catch something.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

I've always done very 'composed' music and worked-out solos. But sometimes it's fun not knowing where you're going.

I'm an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don't really have any music theory, they don't have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it's mostly because we don't know what the rules are. It's easy for us to go to certain places, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.

My brain never turns off of songwriting. Every conversation, everything I see, I'm just kind of like a sponge and I soak it up.

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

It is the most delightful thing that ever happens to me, when I hear something coming out of my guitar and out of my mouth that wasn't there before.

I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips.

I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.

I don't think I would have made 'Blank Project; if I hadn't made 'Cherry Thing.' I think that was a real rebirth in a way, and a remembrance of how I like to make music best, the most. Like being in a more chaotic place, maybe. Like a place of making and being creative where the mistakes can be left in.