Lionel Trilling Quotes

You wonder why I only talk about my personal life. But that's all I've ever done.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what's really happening to me, even if it's a tough pill to swallow for people around me... I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

I don't see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way - artistically.

All my life, I will continue obstinately to write about love, solitude and passion among the kind of people I know. The rest don't interest me.

I just want my relationship to be more for myself rather than a public statement.

The truth is that we don't need everyone to like us; we need a few people to love us. Because what's better than being roundly liked is being fully known - an impossibility both professionally and personally if you're so busy being likable that you forget to be yourself.

I think in real life most of us don't know how to communicate our deepest feelings very well.

Your writing voice is the deepest possible reflection of who you are. The job of your voice is not to seduce or flatter or make well-shaped sentences. In your voice, your readers should be able to hear the contents of your mind, your heart, your soul.

Sometimes it's hard to open up about your personal life, your relationship because you always want the music to be in the forefront. You want the music to be the biggest carrier of everything that you represent.

If you think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.

What most people know about me, they know through my music. This time, I've tried to open that door as wide as possible. These songs are a giant step closer to who I really am and what my music is all about. Hence the title.

I can be overly confident at times, but with someone who I'm very close to, like with my mother, I will break down. In real life, people will find out that I'm not actually that confident and that I'm a real guy underneath it all.

Perhaps I have written fiction because everything unambiguously expressed seems somehow crass to me; and when the subject is myself, I want to jeer and weep.

When it comes to the personal essays I write, I just convince myself that no one will ever read them.

I'm particularly proud of my reluctance to share my dreams with anyone.

You know, I've sung a lot of emotional songs in my life, but when you're writing it yourself, it's very difficult to decide what to reveal.

I like to think the price I paid by being open about my private life helped.

People think I'm just sort of this P. T. Barnum, razzle-dazzle guy. They think I go out of my way to be outlandish and theatrical at the expense of having emotions. They don't get that there's another side to me, and I keep trying to show that other side.

I put my thoughts in a book, which must mean I don't want anyone to read them.

Coming off 'Reflection,' what we really wanted to do was be more vulnerable.

I don't think anyone really knows me.

I'm not afraid to live. I'm not afraid to fail. I'm not afraid to succeed. I'm not afraid to fall in love. I'm not afraid to be alone. I'm just afraid I might have to stop talking about myself for five minutes.

I wish that we lived in a time and a generation where people would stop viewing my honesty as overly emotional. People always act like I spend my life crying in a dark room. I don't, I'm good. I'm a man. I want to be remembered as an artist that gave you a piece of me, as opposed to some surface bullshit. I don't think people realize that we die, we leave here, and either they forget about you or remember you. And how they remember you is up to you. I just want to be remembered as a poet that was open and honest because I wake up every morning and I'm me.

Nobody would know me from my own description of myself; which is why, when called upon (rarely, I grant) to provide an account, I tailor it, I adapt, I try to provide an outline that can, in some way, correlate to the outline that people understand me to have -- that, I suppose, I actually have, at this point. But who I am in my head, very few people really get to see that. Almost none. It's the most precious gift I can give, to bring her out of hiding.

Writing, for me, means humility. It’s a process that involves fear and doubt, especially if you’re writing honestly.