Quotes from Matt Berninger

I don't love being on the road.

The same song can have drastically different feels and personalities just by changing some minor things. A different drumbeat or some vocal overdub could completely transform the song.

'Alligator' was the first record that anyone paid attention to, and it seemed like it was the screamy songs that got us that attention.

The lyrics are what I work on the hardest, but I'm not trying to make a perfectly clear message or anything like that. In fact, I'm usually trying to avoid saying something too directly, because usually that rings false anyway.

My favourite store? Seize Sur Vingt in New York. They make most of my suits, and they are really cool people.

I became at peace with the darkness or the personality that I have. I am usually pretty funny and happy.

Getting on stage and performing and standing under lights is such an unsettling experience - in a good and bad way - but it's the only place I can go to feel comfortable.

Lyrics need to be good, but they don't need to be obvious right away.

A lot of the lyrics I write involve images that just swing the song in a way that feels really good to me and there isn't a literal explanation. They're not riddles for the listener to solve.

I do a lot of editing and switching around and putting little pieces together to get the right mood and personality, and it takes me forever to get a song finished.

Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave know best. Although I wear a lot of jeans, I've been told that Nick Cave doesn't own a pair and wouldn't be caught dead in denim.

A person with grace is somebody who's socially graceful or is a classy person, but sometimes you just feel the opposite of that, and you just feel like a jerk and a loser and a weirdo.

A song is a song and, if I am emotionally connected to do it, whether it is sad or not sad, I am going to chase that song.

Maybe because I have spent too much of my life in rock clubs. I don't really go to parties anymore either. I'll usually be in the bus by 11:30 after a show.

Usually, writing lyrics for me is like bleeding drop by drop from the forehead.

People will dig their heels in and fight for the things they love and against the things they hate.

When it comes to lyrics, I just write down a lot of things, and only a very tiny fraction of it, I think, is any good.

It takes us a long time to write a song that we all really like, so it makes sense that it would take a while for the listener to get there, too.

Once you do have a child, you want to talk about every detail of it. And it is really boring to all your friends, and it should be. I was really worried about even going there at all.

At first, when 'Boxer' came out, people were a little let down, and we worried that it might be the end for us. But then it began to grow on people. 'Boxer' bought us our creative freedom.

I have pit bulls barking at me on half of the love songs.

I'm a stubborn guy that loses his temper, sometimes driving the station wagon in the wrong direction for hours and hours and never admitting that he's gone the wrong way.

The truth is, I'm pretty lighthearted.

Somehow, you realize you can kind of do anything in music. You don't have to be good at a certain thing; you can just do whatever you want.