Jeff Tweedy Quotes

I love playing our older songs along with newer ones but If all I have is my old stuff, I quit. Creating is more rewarding.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

I'm doing what I do for the right reasons. I love the music that I make.

Performers like to perform, and there's certainly no disgrace in entertaining people, in giving pleasure, you hope, through your singing. My work defines who I am.

I do always want to be creating something; I can't help it. I don't know why that is, but I'm certainly not gonna knock it now, at the age of 36. It seems to be working.

I'm constantly doing new stuff, and I want it to be received really well. Who knows what's ego, what's business, what's artistic. It all shifts on a day-to-day basis.

I want to feel creative when I'm working. I don't want to just work for the sake of working.

I feel really relevant and creative, and I don't think I would've made an album if I didn't feel relevant. I wouldn't have said a word.

I think about it as not so much 'I need to get it out of me,' it's not that my thoughts are poison, I just want to write good music.

I can't be Stevie Wonder; I can't be Marvin Gaye, but I can be the foundation that I think withholds that mold.

If I return to films, the feeling to do it must come from the heart.

I always look for inspiration, and the creativity of artists is an essential element to my life, my work, and my happiness.

It's definitely a joy when you make a record to know you are doing it for the right reasons: You want to do it and that you think you have something valid to offer.

It's all about the music, and I work as hard as I do strictly because of the music. It's not a money thing; it's not a career thing. It's simply to do with me being a music fan with a broad taste, wanting to do different styles and wanting to work with lots of different people.

I try not to think about the idea of reaching more and more people, because once you get in that mindset, I think you lose the point of why you're doing it in the first place. Still, the best feeling I ever get is when I finish a song, and it exists, and it didn't exist before, and now it's there, and it makes me feel a certain way.

When I'm writing [songs], some days the pen just goes. I'm not in charge and I'm almost listening outside of it. That's when I realize that we all have to start looking at life as a gift. It's like listening to a color and believing that these colors have soul mates and once you get them all together the painting is complete.

I think when you're making an album, as the songs are piling up, one of the good things about it is that you will often write the song that you need.

I can't speak for everybody, I think, for me, I will not be defined by the lyrics of my song. I am a man who does music. It's like clothes don't make the man, the man makes the clothes. It's, it's like that song don't make me, I make the song.

If you think art is a competitive forum, then you're going to stop doing it if you're not good. But if it's not competitive, it's something that you'll keep doing.

Writing songs, that's what gets me going. Not the drugs or the sex or the rock'n'roll behaviour, it's the music.

If you don't have to write songs, why write them? I've got enough where I don't really feel the urge to write anything additional.

When I'm making a movie, it's making use of my creative juices, and it fills me up with what really is - I think my purpose here is to tell stories.

The pride of the artisan in his art and its uses is pride in himself...It is in his skill and ability to make things as he wishes them to be that he rejoices.

The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones.

I'm blessed, because I enjoy every part of my life. I enjoy writing songs. I've been trying to write songs since I was five years old.