Personal Resonance Quotes

Shakespeare - I was very influenced - still am - by Shakespeare. I couldn't believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.

I'm always amazed at how records can make you feel like somebody else understands you.

Some of the best records are the ones that really affect you the most - they're pure emotion and energy, and it's like you're in that person's brain. It's pretty cool.

That's where it begins and ends for me and these songs were the ones that touched me the deepest. It was like I was laying hold of some part of me that I didn't even know was there until I let it out.

Your best as an artist is to create something that resonates for you.

What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

Maybe sincerity is the new punk. But to me, I think I have to connect with something emotionally, on some level, or I don't care about it. And if I don't care about it, then I don't think anyone listening to it will, either.

In the course of my life, I've made some happy songs but it's the more sort of like pathos-laden, emotional, melancholic music that either I make or that other people make that really resonates with me.

I'm taken by a story and a character. I'll read a script, and if it touches me and moves me and makes waves, that's why I'll choose it.

Only the tone-deaf doubt the power of music, though some feel it more strongly than others.

When I listen to songs, I can smell a rat. I like songs that speak to me with some deeper truth.

Looking at the original lyrics [of "A Song For You" ] as I was preparing it, I thought, "Wow! I feel like it was written for me." That's what a great song does. You don't have to do a lot of homework. You can just say the words and it springs to life.

I have to feel something emotionally on the story to be able to write for it. I turn things down if I don't feel I'm really right to tell that particular story.

What happens is things come to you - director, script - and if you respond to it, it's because it's tapping into some part of what's inside you, and different roles tap into different parts.

I'm not very good at knowing what people want. I don't have that talent. The best I can do is make films that resonate with me and see what happens.

When we read, we are not looking for new ideas, but to see our own thoughts given the seal of confirmation on the printed page. The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own—the place where we live—and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves

When I read a novel that I really like, I feel as if I am in direct, personal communication with the author. I feel as if the author and I are on the same wavelength mentally, that we have a lot in common with each other, and that we could have an interesting conversation, or even a friendship, if the circumstances permitted it. When the novel comes to an end, I feel a certain letdown, a loss of contact. It is natural to want to recapture that feeling by reading other works by the same author, or by corresponding with him/her directly.

Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

My hope is that no matter your mood there is [on a Joyride albom] a song on there that speaks to you.

Sometimes I do a Dylan song and it seems to fit me so right that I figure maybe I wrote it. Dylan didn’t always do it for me as a singer, not in the early days, but then I started listening to the lyrics. That sold me.

Pearl Jam is a band I have a lot of respect for. Nirvana and Sonic Youth I feel the same way about. Mumford & Sons, My Morning Jacket, Wilco, Givers, and Foo Fighters are just some of my favorites. I respect bands that give me something of themselves that I can feel. ("Posing" bands turn me off generally speaking.) It all has to do with a feeling I have about them. That is what music is to me, a feeling. It's similar with people too.

Music is meaningless noise unless it touches a receiving mind.

A creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

There are many meditation techniques, and it's important to find one that resonates with you.

I only produce directors and movies that I have a lot in common with.