Paul Westerberg Quotes

I got so I was really just sick of sculpture.

I do a so-called trip into myself: I sit down at the piano and the melody might start to evolve from my playing or then I might start to sing it.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I'm at mentally.

One of the key emotions a lot of people seem to be feeling is disillusionment, and what I try to do as a lyricist is touch on these emotions.

When I look back at the record and listen to it, I can sort of see where I was at when I was making it - these brief little moments, different places I was at emotionally.

You have to remember that writing itself is so solitary. You start writing because you're lonely.

The only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out.

I recorded this album in a windowless room in Brooklyn by myself. I think Chamber of Reflection sums the album up better than Salad Days to tell you the truth.

I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.

You're in good spirits when you create and produce great music. All situations inspire music in different ways, man, from good situations, bad situations, depression, falling in love, falling out of love. I've been going through all those type of things.

You treat the air as a canvas and the paint is the chords that come through your fingers, out of the keyboard.

All good writing comes out of aloneness.

You have to have the time to feel sorry for yourself in order to be a good abstract expressionist.

I'll always regret how I recorded 'Burgundy' 'cause it's not how I felt. The words that were coming out of my mouth and how I mean them, it's so much different.

An angry people cannot create anything that is not imbued with anger.

I learned that creativity is all about being frustrated.

'Southern Accents,' I think that's one of my best, really. That would have been 1984, and I wrote that on the piano in the studio at home. I had a studio, and I just happened to be down there in the middle of the night. It was quite late, probably early morning, and I just started to play, and a song just started to appear.

I was in a state of gnawing, sensuous agitation that excited continually both blood and nerves when I sketched out the music for 'Tannhauser' and brought it to completion.

How could you not let your life affect your work? That's all it is. Unless you have a very specific, isolated version of what you're doing.

The comics work is very slow, and it basically involves working for sometimes years in isolation and not knowing how the work is going to be received.

When I think about making 'Within,' it was not a very fun experience at all.

If I'm happy and joyous, which I have been a lot in my life, thankfully, I'm usually not at the piano writing about it.

I know some people are like, 'I'm depressed, and I'm a struggling artist,' and that really works for some people, but that doesn't work for me. I have to be really happy, even when I'm writing my depressing songs; I have to come through that stage before I can write.

Composing is an emotional thing.

Music, for me, is just about where you're at, and that's always changing.