Gerard Way Quotes

I'm rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it's no longer his... I just see what people make of it.

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.

As a songwriter you have an umbilical cord to the song and it's hard to expand on your understanding of the lyrics. Whereas when you cover a song you can create your own reason why you're attached to it.

It's a different process for me, but it's really cool to hear someone else singing the song that you wrote.

In some ways, it's more rewarding to hear someone interpret a piece of music that you're a part of.

I think the best music videos are the ones that have nothing to do with the song. Those are all my favorites.

When I write a song it's always from the point of view: makes the song the best it can be.

Writing songs is no different than explaining to somebody what you dreamed last night: No one ever gives you crap for what you dreamed last night. "I was laying in my bed, and all of a sudden a stallion jumped on my bed and the next thing I know I was in Mars but it looked like my kitchen"... That's kind of what I do with my songs, write them in a dream-like manner. It's up to people to swallow it however they want.

I never feel that I have to adopt a character. It's more the way I choose to present the music and that's always based on what is right for the song.

My brother & I have always said that to write a song, it takes all the experiences of your life, plus the time it takes to write it! To be specific, yes, sometimes a song takes place in one session - together in one day.

I hope we [with Patrick Leonard] can come up with something orchestral with some spoken material. And I also, God willing, hope that perhaps another record of songs also might emerge, but one never knows.

Music exists when rhythmic, melodic or harmonic order is deliberately created, and consciously listened to, and it is only language-using, self-conscious creatures ... who are capable of organizing sounds in this way, either when uttering them or when perceiving them. We can hear music in the song of the nightingale, but it is music that no nightingale has heard.

Other people singing my songs is something that I've never been casual about. I've always been very touched by it and I always go into immediate critical suspension.

Some people think a song without words isn't a real song. Tell that to Beethoven and he'll kick your ass!

I learned how to be more theatrical and have more fun, and to take a song and sing it over and over again in different ways, and make it different each time. I'm not just singing the song - it's this thing that's affecting me.

Normally the meaning of the songs, if there is any, occurs to me after I've written the song.

What I really search for is something that I really love hearing, something that's my own private game: If I find a song I really like, I try to do a definitive version.

'Oh! Darling' was a great one of Paul's that he didn't sing too well. I always thought I could have done it better-it was more my style than his. He wrote it, so what the hell, he's going to sing it.

The truth about autobiographical songs, he realized, was that you had to make the present become the past, somehow: you had to take a feeling or a friend or a woman and turn whatever it was into something that was over, so that you could be definitive about it. You had to put it in a glass case and look at it and think about it until it gave up its meaning.

Every song has a different genesis, or feeling. Usually the lyrics, I don't really know what it's all about, I just kinda do it. I mean, there's a combination of, like you're saying, that kind of lyrics about commitment or vaguely relationship lyrics mixed with jokey 90s Beck-style non-sequiturs and stuff.

Typography is to literature as musical performance is to composition: an essential act of interpretation, full of endless opportunities for insight or obtuseness.

All you gotta do is think of the song in your head. And it doesn't matter whether you can play it or not, you can get somebody to play it. With songs I've written, there's a song called "The Statue", which I can't play. There are songs that I've written that I've actually just hummed on - there's a song on one of the albums they have there on the Internet called "My Love Was True" and it's almost operatic. I can't play it. But I can sing it.

I was writing "Diamonds and Rust' and it had nothing to do with what it turned out to be. I don't remember what it is, but I think I was writing a song. It was literally interrupted by a phone call, and it just took another curve and it came out to be what it was.

"On Script" is one of my favorite songs I've ever written. I'd just been jamming on it one day, and again I was struggling with lyrics. I'm still figuring out what it's about. I've seen a couple of reviews that are like, "It's about the monotony of playing the same songs every night," because I say, "On script every night/Like a well-rehearsed stage show." It's not about that at all, but I find that funny, how people project what they think about me, or songwriters in general.

I think that anyone really can write songs, it just takes having an idea and a feeling and chasing it, and you can learn more about it. I think that's why I go to so many sessions. It is a craft that you can learn from other people. I find it to be the most fascinating thing. So I write a lot, yeah!