Quotes from Stephen Malkmus

When you get older, you have to wrestle with what's appropriate behavior a little bit more. Am I not acting too old or too young?

With Pavement, we had no managers and never had a lawyer. We got lucky with not signing any bad deals.

I've always been attracted to negative influences - I thought that meant you were smart.

Well, yeah, I sang to some songs on the radio or in the shower.

I never decided to start singing, to be a singer.

Lou Reed is something like a personal favorite of mine, but you could always put me into that drawer of singers who can't really sing, who speak their songs.

We were delighted to have Nigel as a producer. The only problem is that Nigel is so famous that he seems to dominate most interviews without being there.

I like that band Get Hustle. They're cool live. I haven't heard their records, though.

I'm a junior - like Dinosaur Jr.

If a voice is just too nice, without an edge, it kinda all flows by. You forget it. You don't listen to the lyrics.

I've tried to rap, and I cannot do it.

I am good at just looking in the kitchen and getting stuff on the table and keeping the mess minimal. There's an art to the drudgery.

Most people want to be seen or heard. You want to shine. That's my way of shining.

We're not on a desperate mission to write chart compatible stuff.

We always did our own mixing.

Freddie Gray was a story I followed closer than others, for whatever reason, in this larger narrative of police brutality.

I guess the majority of people who want to ban certain musicians are the ones who are so proud of everything America stands for.

The lyrics are different from Nick Cave songs and lyrics. His songs are very narrative.

A good voice isn't so important. It's more important to sound really unique.

We're probably a couple of freaks who've created their own little universe, are living in our own little world and that's the only place where we can survive.

In this achievement-based lifestyle, most of us have certain boxes we're checking to make us useful humans. But a lot of things you do as a parent are kinda invisible. There's a lot you achieve - just getting dinner on the table - that are more than making a song.

Family is the best. I can honestly say, it's a gift that is beyond making art. I didn't know that when I got into it.

Lyrics are back, maybe. It seems like there was a bit of an attitude that lyrics are not important.

I would be happy to produce groups, like John Cale - he was in the Velvet Underground, and then he went on to produce these bands.