Avi Kaplan Quotes

I want to make people cry even when they don't understand my words.

I'm the type of artist who touches people, that's the type of artist that I am.

Whenever you write music, you want it to touch people on a certain level. I mean, I've been reading tweets about 'Troublemaker' and people saying 'OMG, I can so relate to this - this is a guy that I fancy, or a girl that I fancy; it's exactly like this person.'

My work is through my emotions, so everything kind of goes together.

The main objective in any song, the songs that I write, has always been that it reflect the way I feel, that it touch me when I'm finished with it, that it moves me, that it can take me along with it and involve me in what its saying.

The whole reason I do what I do, both in music and acting, is to make people feel something, to really relate to what I do on a personal level.

Your voice is not your instrument. Your voice is the character that you build, your innermost feelings, the things that you want to say, and your instrument is the vehicle that you use to carry the message.

If you make something from your heart, of course you want it to connect with the people.

I want to make people feel something - that's really cool.

I think my music is a way of communicating very directly with people and with people's emotions. I try to make music that doesn't need layers of complexity or obfuscation to speak to people.

Music is a language of emotion. I'm passionate about it because I think it's the most direct way to connect to the things that are ineffable. Words just aren't necessary a good enough opportunity to express. Words are maybe less than accessible at expressing.

In short, you have only your emotions to sell. This is the experience of all writers.

The thing that I enjoy about being an actor and the thing that I enjoy about the arts in general is the ability to make the audience feel an emotion that they weren't intending to feel before they went in.

My music is touching people in whatever spaces they need to be touched in.

One has to sing from the heart to let it touch the right chords. Unless you enjoy the song, your listener will not either.

I wish to be moved. I cannot feel in life. I must have others do it for me in theater.

My goal is to connect with people emotionally. I take life’s experiences and translate them into music — music that hopefully creates an impact on the listener.

I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. I just want (the audience) to have an experience that moves them.

Technology is mechanical and contrary to the emotions that inform a person's life. The country music field has especially been hit hard by this. All my songs have been written by people who went out of fashion years ago. Just like da Vinci and Renoir and van Gogh. Nobody paints like that anymore. But it can't be wrong to try.

I think that in order to write really well and convincingly, one must be somewhat poisoned by emotion.

Every song I ever wrote, I wrote to be heard. So, if I was given a choice that 50 years from now I could either have a dollar or knowing that some kid was listening to my song, I'd go with the kid listening to my song.

Music, somehow, breaks through, to everybody.

I love music. I do play. It's like mathematics, and it's also emotional. It's nice to play, for no other reason than just to play.

Music gets us in touch with our emotions in a way that's more intimate than any other art form.

Jesus, music has always been my first love. I use music in my work because it's the fastest way to an emotional place. You hear a song, and that memory comes right back-- you're there... Making music is immediate, and it's all about you. If you're playing guitar, the feeling comes through-- the way you bend the note, the intensity with which you hit the strings. With making films, although it's real emotion, it's false emotion. You're lying.