Richard Lester Quotes

The Beatles are here, and if you could see me my hand is on the ceiling. Styx is here, and my hand is in the basement.

I was told by the world for a long time that I was angry, or that I was sad.

Before I even became a guitar player, I wanted to be a Beatle. That was my first dream as a musician, was to be like a Beatle.

If I was in a bad mood, then maybe I won't talk about it, but you're going to know about it somehow. If something was bothering me, maybe I would have acted a little bit like a child, meaning I go break something in a room.

Colombia changed the way I write and sing.

'Reign' - and this might sound cheesy, but it's a dream I had. I dreamt everything that happened in that song, woke up, and wrote the song.

I'm just writing less of my own music lately - I go in and out of phases a lot. Sometimes there are these accidents that just sort of happen, that are kind of waiting around the corner. I guess Modest Mouse was one of them.

When the Beatles broke up, I thought to myself, 'Dude, seriously?'

Sometimes a song can be born in few minutes, if the feeling is right, some other times it can take days.

In Germany, they all thought I was a bit mental, very emotional.

A lot of the songs that I wrote during 'Pt. 1' and 'Pt. 2' are the first songs that I ever wrote that sounded like that. I was in this phase - a certain creative space in my life - personally and musically.

When they ask who is your biggest influence, I always say Pharrell: whether it is music or fashion, I'm a big fan.

I've always had a hard time just being angry or just being really sad - the bigger emotions.

I am a very moody person.

I got to see The Beatles a couple of times. In fact, I saw their last performance ever in San Francisco. The Beatles were massive to me - I learned so much from them.

'Supermodel' was a hard record for me; it was an emotional record to write. I was purging a lot of stuff with that album, and I think the one thing I didn't really consider, that I'd be supporting it for two years and living in that state of mind every night.

Whenever I write a new song, it always happens when I come back from Europe or Egypt or something like that. It's always from travelling.

I don't know about the totally happy album, though. I don't know if that will ever come from me.

Every song I've written, it's about what I've gone through, good or bad. It kind of comes out of me, and I'm grateful for that. I've got friends who are back home who've got no way to express that, and they're kind of in a different position in life. It's alarming to me that I've written something on my bedroom floor when I was 19 or something, and then there's 50,000 people that know the words, and they've got a similar feeling. If you thought about it too much, your head would blow up.

Tis a question whether adversity or prosperity makes the most poets.

She started off, walking fast, as if the speed of her steps could give form to the things she felt.

I didn’t realize I was crying until it was time to say the blinding words. ‘I do,’ I managed to choke out in a nearly unintelligible whisper... When it was his turn to speak, the words rang clear and victorious. ‘I do,’ he vowed.

I think it was the perfect gestation time for this particular piece [ Sounds Like Me: My Life (So Far) in Song]. One of the songs that I considered talking about was "Manhattan," because it was chronicling the end of a long relationship that was part of the reason why I moved from Los Angeles to New York, which was such a life-changing decision. I don't regret that it's not in there, but that's one that I considered diving into, and I have little piecemeal snippets of writing about that floating around

I never sit and fill a journal with lyrics. Most of the time I'm trying to write a feeling, not a story. I'm not necessarily trying to describe the details of a place or event so much as the feeling of the thing. It is a kind of weird alchemy that is elusive until it feels right.