Stephen Malkmus Quotes

Not only is your story worth telling, but it can be told in words so painstakingly eloquent that it becomes a song.

I love when I dive into lyrics that give me human complexity and intricate narrative.

A lot of people talk to me about writing lyrics and it is obvious they are really paying attention to the fact that ours are different from a lot of other bands.

I was always more interested in story songs, things with a point of view... and things that informed me.

I have always wanted what I have now come to call the voice of personal narrative. That has always been the appealing voice in poetry. It started for me lyrically in Shakespeare's sonnets.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

The books I love most are the ones that combine some sort of gripping story with really beautiful or stylish writing. Some of my favorites are 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy, 'The Virgin Suicides' by Jeffrey Eugenides, 'The Interpreter of Maladies' by Jhumpa Lahiri, and 'Blindness' by Jose Saramago.

The quality of the writing, really. Simple as that. Beautiful words. It's very nice as a singer to do great songs, which have wonderful lyrics and strong feelings underneath the song.

When people tell really good stories in songs, I really like it.

I want to be inside Nic Pizzolatto's brain.

When you write a song, the goal is not to convey the details of your life. You should write a memoir or something if that's what you're going to do.

I think what makes compelling fiction or cinema is when you're basically taking the most intense moments of experience and you're creating a song or a narrative out of it.

I'm open to reading almost anything - fiction, nonfiction - as long as I know from the first sentence or two that this is a voice I want to listen to for a good long while. It has much to do with imagery and language, a particular perspective, the assured knowledge of the particular universe the writer has created.

I think songwriters are more related to fiction writers. The Odyssey was a story in song. To me, that's so beautiful, all those painted characters, all those travels and adventures.

I like working on stories where I can explore the darker corners of childhood without illustrations but with humor.

As a lyricist, you love to hear other great lyrics or other great concepts.

The basic rule of storytelling is 'show, don't tell.'

Somehow, you can achieve a directness in the novel that you can't get anywhere else.

Technique is of less interest than character and story.

I want the reader to feel something is astonishing. Not the 'what happens,' but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.

The best song lyrics seem to me so artful, so brilliant, so warm and humorous, with both passion and wit, that my admiration is matched only by my envy.

I'm definitely still putting effort into my lyrics, for them to be emotional and tell a story.

I love to evoke the bones and meat and thoughts of characters.

'Pain' is more indicative of what I like to do. I'm lyric-conscious. I like to tell stories, give advice. Instead of writing a 'Dear Abby' column, I do it on records.

Good fiction can both entertain and light up those dark corners where nice people don't want to go.