Johnny Marr Quotes

I live a super-healthy lifestyle not because it's sensible or that I'm contrite, but because I need to keep my focus on the music I'm making. To do that, I need to be wide awake.

When I have a chunk of time that I can really dedicate to music, I really want to get into it. I want to do some really hard stuff and push myself.

A lot of drummers get sidetracked by the instrument. It can engulf you.

Music does not carry you along. You have to carry it along strictly by your ability to really just focus on that little small kernel of emotion or story.

You must take care of your family, respect the music, and work intensely. Health and family come first, and then you can make much better music.

When I am on stage I am locked away in energy and in concentration. I hear and I think about nothing but the music and I can only relax when it is over.

Obviously it's fun to let yourself go and eat a pint of Haagen Dazs, but being healthy feels the best. Sobriety and health is the greatest thing.

I keep healthy and I'm always very active and always have been so. I don't really see any signs of aging yet. Music keeps you young.

I stopped drinking a few years ago, and drinking was a big help with me making music, because drinking gives you courage. But it also makes you reckless, and that's the trouble. You can get away with that your 20s, but not in your 60s, and I'll be 70 next year. Life is a small space now, much more intimate. I'm not out there in the world anymore, but I'm watching.

Being responsible and disciplined and healthy really matters.

I just love making music. I always stay in the studio. Making music is my main focus.

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

So, I gained a little..weight, .. Big deal. Clean and sober.

Sobriety is love of health, or inability to eat much.

I'm composing more than before. I'm cutting down on conducting.

Oh, man, oh how I wish I didn't smoke or drink to reason with my head.

I make my films like you're going to die if you miss the next minute. You better not go get popcorn.

I think better when I'm not sober

There is drinking in lots of the songs because there is drinking in life. Drinking stimulates the imagination.

Everybody is doing the best things possible to still healthy and to play as long as possible.

I have learned that if this is what I am going to do, and do it well, then I have to avoid drinking.

I was always the type of person, and still am the type of person, that I cannot be creative and use substances. So from a very early age I knew that if I wanted to make music, successfully, in any capacity, I was going to have to get sober.

Whenever you do any one thing intensely over a period of time you have to give up other lives you could be living. You have to have a real single-minded kind of tunnel vision if you want to get anything significant accomplished. Especially if the desire is not to be a businessman, but to be a creative person.

I love silence. And one of the paradoxes about the way I live and also about my work is that definitely one of the reasons I went into music, and especially into composing is that I love setting up an environment where I can be by myself for long periods of time and have everything as quiet as possible, either to think about sound, or to think about ideas, or just to focus on things that are important to me.

Music is a savage art, a measured madness.