Jason Isbell Quotes

It's true that I can write a song and not really be sure what the meaning of it is.

I am always surprised at all the things people read into my photos, but it also amuse me. That may be because I have nothing specific in mind when I'm working. My intentions are neither feminist nor political. I try to put double or multiple meanings into my photos, which might give rise to a greater variety of interpretations.

That's what I find with any good song, you just have to let it happen. Out of about twenty songs you might write, one of any significance. It might be thirty or forty, but I just keep churning them out and churning them out in hope that one of them will stick.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.

I don't dream songs. I'm more apt to write dreams down and then to be able to interpret them into a song. I also tend to get up and write prose in the morning from which will come songs.

I always try to write a song, I never just want to write a record.

Every time you write a song, you're looking for some sort of perfection, and you never quite reach it. You're always looking for that extra missing piece.

I feel like I'm a secondary artist, a kind of a conduit for the writer, and if it's a good writer, then I have a great road map.

All good art, to me, is uncertainty.

When I pick up the guitar, it's a melody, and that's what drives the lyrics. It's bits and pieces of truth, but it is storytelling.

I usually have an idea of how I want a song to sound, but I don't always know how to get there.

I try to write catchy hooks but, at the same time, things that mean something that will provoke thought.

I don't know what really makes a great musical or not. In the end, you write it, and you write it because you want to write it.

I continually blacken pages and scribble away, so I always have a number of songs that are half-finished.

It's different every time you write. Sometimes it might be harder than it was the day before. I don't like forcing it, but sometimes, if you force it a little bit, it helps you to push forward, and you get inspired in a way. I've written songs in an hour. And there are songs that have taken me six months.

I think other people's interpretations of what I've written are a lot better than what I have, because I don't understand a lot of what I write.

Normally when I do an album, I have a concept behind it.

I've always tried to avoid music being direct therapy, and I've always found there's a power when you write something that can have its own interpretation - although I'm not being intentionally evasive.

I feel it's my job as the artist who is making the music to pair it with visuals that I see in my head while writing the music in the first place.

I really like people to be able to interpret stuff in their own way, I like the ambiguity of the medium. We're just four guys in a band trying to articulate things in a questioning way. Who are we to tell people what to think?

I guess I started writing poetry and stuff and then decided to set it to music.

If I was a painter, I would have hundreds of finished and unfinished canvases in my studio waiting for people to see, and it is the same with my music. I've got so many pieces of music and songs waiting to be heard.

I do like how the music can be misunderstood.

I think that feels like it to me. I mean whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it - every word has a big question mark over it.

No individual photo explains anything. That’s what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium.