John Darnielle Quotes

For me, fiction isn't very cathartic. It can be a broad, long catharsis, but it's a whole different thing - whereas music is physical. Essentially, it goes in through your ear. Fiction is cerebral, necessarily. It can do emotional stuff. But they don't really compare - not for me.

Music should come crashing out of your speakers and grab you, and the lyrics should challenge whatever preconceived notions that listener has.

Melody has a certain way that it projects back to you. It triggers certain nerves in your body and certain instincts that normally wouldn't be triggered by a normal voice.

I vent through my music. That's the only outlet I have.

I get inspired by the sounds that evoke an emotion from me. That's what I am drawn to; that's what turns me on.

That's the good thing about music: you can sing about people's lives in its stages and feelings. Some songs can put something in context that you couldn't. They can free your mind or can make you think or can be redeeming.

It's great to do something that makes your brain just switch to a different mode, and music can do that really powerfully.

The horror genre is real cathartic. It allows us to bring out the things that scare us and get it out and have an emotional release.

Sometimes punching a bag for half an hour was pretty cathartic and pretty necessary.

Theatricality - that's where you get catharsis. The Greeks went to see drama because they felt like this wasn't happening to them.

Sometimes, when we're on tour, I'll find an empty room or a corner and I'll just sing. It heals something in me, be it some kind of isolation or loneliness. It's really quite beautiful that singing can do that.

The power of music is a wonderful thing. It can make us happy, make us cry. It can make us forget and make us remember.

With music, it's a therapy for me. So whatever I'm dealing with at the time, I talk about it when I rap.

Life is so mundane, isn't it? It's great to hear a guitarist getting into it and the rhythmic section blasting, even if it's all meaningless.

For me, music is a magical life force that has the ability to make me cry, pick me up, and take me back in time.

My first mixtape especially - that came from a heartbreak.

Making music has always made me happy. When I go through a situation, the best way for me to get over it is to bundle up all of my emotions about it, put it in a little shell, create something, and then let it go.

At the end of the day, what people want from me is to get up there on that stage and make them feel powerful and give them a release for an hour and a half or two hours every once in a while. And if I'm still able to do that, hopefully I'm still making people happy.

Music says the things that people don't say or are afraid to say, and that's the best part about it for me.

For me, I need to listen to music in the morning, and after, it's kind of like a shower, you know what I mean? It's kind of getting rid of everything. I always play music after I act. It's not a conscious thing, like, 'Oh finally, I need to do this,' it's kind of a constant need.

I have always enjoyed watching my songs make people cry.

I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for

I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.

Colour is the touch of the eye, Music to the deaf, A word out of darkness.

Writing is not my problem, it is my solution.