Quotes from Ben Folds

I start songs all the time. If I weren't so lazy, I would finish them. It's like when I have a deadline I have to. I always feel very lucky that I am forced to make records at certain times. If I was forced to make 2 records a year, I would write twice as many songs. I can't make myself finish something unless I am forced

an intention that radiates out of you. It's humility and gratitude. It's about living inside the notes, and between them, and understanding that each of those notes may mean a completely different thing to each person in an audience. Once it leaves your fingertips or your lips, it's no longer yours. Maybe it never was.

I didn't love every group I encountered. In fact, I'll be quite happy to never see gun-and-coin dude again. But I learned to stand in other people's shoes, as much as a child can. It's hard to view certain people as anything but monsters, yet there's value in giving it the old college try. By dignifying even the most despicable character as a human being, by offering them what empathy we can manage, we also hold them accountable for their choices.

I highly recommend enforced boredom as a way to develop your imagination. But don't take my advice; listen to Neil Young. He said it best: "There's a lot to learn for wasting time.

People often ask me if it's scary to make up a song onstage, dictating parts, on the fly, to a full orchestra. Well, no. It doesn't occur to me to worry about that. I have a jazz musician's view of mistakes. If you play a wrong note, you can always make the same mistake again on purpose and make it sound right. Insistence on the mistake can be quite musical. Indeed, "once is a mistake, twice is jazz," a quote often attributed to Miles Davis.

It's always the easy way out, being an existential chicken. Not really being there. It's harder, it's riskier, to be present.

You haven't lived until you've been screamed at by an Elvis impersonator until AAA shows up.

I don't want to sound like a whiny little bitch. I can certainly appreciate how amazing all this was. How fortunate we were. It was a trip of a lifetime. But the success felt like a detour, oddly. A fluke. When I first sat down to write this book and reflected on this peak time of Ben Folds Five, it was difficult to identify what lessons, if any, could be gleaned and passed on.

It's a legitimate worry for an aging rocker that your music will become so out of date and toxically uncool, it will get your kids beaten up at school. But, hey, it's your job.

Finally, empathy and perspective are everything, and neither should be taken for granted. After all, there's always someone out there who thinks you're the monster. Remember that the ground beneath your feet can always shift and that it should always be questioned. Even the things that seem still are still changing —From "Still," Over The Hedge soundtrack, 2004

I came in for what I assumed would be a spanking and instead was leaving with a full music scholarship? For being an asshole? I was blown away!

Sometimes I punch myself hard as I can Yelling "Nobody cares," hoping someone will tell me how wrong I am

By dignifying even the most despicable character as a human being, by offering them what empathy we can manage, we also hold them accountable for their choices.

But don't take my advice; listen to Neil Young. He said it best: "There's a lot to learn for wasting time.

I try not to jump to conclusions about anything I feel I've seen or heard before. I try not to write off music my kids play me as "throwback" even if it closely resembles something that I thought was new when I was a kid. Sure, I want to put on the seventies' English band the Jam and say, See! Your new little punk bands are just shiny versions of this! But I'd be wrong. To diminish the new as nothing more than a rehash is a mistake.

So sure, I had to dig out of a little insecurity hole vocally, but I don't blame my parents for this. We are all a work in progress.

You always notice the holidays more when you feel the most alone.

I'm really good at writing 'almost hits'.

And all I really want to say is you're the reason I want to stay.

But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you that's the center of it, that is it. It's almost like there's something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if you're a songwriter that sings your material.

The reason I stop playing songs is usually because I get sick of them, and then they find themselves back into the set list at some point.

I've gotten to the point where I realize that I need to tell my truth in music and not walk around blabbing my mind.

The nature of honesty is that if someone has information or knows something about you that you don't want heard, then they have power over you.

If I'm in a relationship and my girlfriend is sleeping with other people, I don't need to know who it is; I just want to know how she feels about it.