Quotes from Ryan Adams

Man, I loved The Smiths so much. I thought they looked awesome, and Morrissey had hearing aids like my Papaw.

When you make a heavy record, there should be a point where you say you don't want to share it, but then maybe you come around.

I could fall asleep at 10:30 watching 'Hill Street Blues.' I might wake up at 1 A.M. and have a riff in my head.

It's hard to be bipolar and bicoastal at the same time.

To make a song is a gift, and once it's done it keeps evolving and changing and becomes a tool to interact with other people. It's like a conversation.

Is it possible to love someone too much? You bet.

Ultimately, however bad a situation is for people, especially if it's a condition of love or some internal dialogue, I think most people would agree that when you look back on it, those times are well remembered.

For me, the best thing you can do as a man in loving someone is to do your best, go on that walk, and at the end of that walk be as much of a gentleman as you were in the beginning.

I went down to Houston and I stopped in San 'Antone, I passed up the station for the bus. I was trying to find me something, but I wasn't sure just what... man, I ended up with pockets full of dust.

I think it would be wrong to consider 'Ashes and Fire' a love album. The record is obsessed with time. I believe that there is a kinder view of the self on this record.

I see this beautiful and tragic world, and I do my best to describe it, because it's been crushing to me since I was a kid. It seems to be how I connect.

Maybe I am a jerk sometimes. Maybe I'm not. I think most people are kind of a jerk once in a while.

I was a nervous young man. I wanted to do so many things. And I was so enthusiastic and earnestly in love with so many things that I tried too hard. I tried really, really hard. And I made a lot of mistakes. I was afraid of a lot of stuff. And I kind of feel bad for that person I was.

There is this strange fog of being a young man that I would refer to as soft time. Time does not go forward there. It's a series of doors that kind of wind back into one another, like a series of doors in the upper floor of a house. You revisit the same lessons over and over again, or you choose to ignore them.

When I'm in New York, I just want to walk down the street and feel this thing, like I'm in a movie.

When I was in high school, I remember, on my Converse sneakers, on one side, I had written 'Social Distortion,' and on the other side, I had written 'Guns N' Roses.'

Where do you go when you're lonely?Where do you go when you're blue?Where do you go when you're lonely?I'll follow youWhen the stars go blue.

I'm like an '80s kid. I was born in the mid-'70s. By the time the '80s kicked in, I'm listening to Dead Kennedys, but I'm also listening to Simple Minds.

I was an earnest young man who just wanted to make music.

Some people want to go forever, I just want to burn off hard and bright.

Music is my thing. It's my thing it's what I love. It's what I do. It's football to me it's Christmas to me religion to me poetry to me.

I don't know any jazz stuff. I don't know how to jam in that way. So jamming, for me, is writing a tune.

Part of the joy of music is listening to lots of different kinds of music and learning from it. Specifically for me, I like writing songs that move me, and what moves me are beautiful songs on the piano or the guitar and really, really heavy music.

My intentions have been, and are always, to just really get behind what my ideas are musically and to just ride this thing out, cause it feels good, and I think for the most part it's good music. Even when it's not, I'd like to still search for something that could be even like a little bit mind-blowing or shocking to me.