Quotes from Chris Thile

I've always taken a lot of joy in my work, but it's also been very results-oriented. It's kind of like, making the thing, and taking a lot of joy in that, as opposed to allowing myself to be transported by the work of my fellow musicians.

I was two years old when I saw the mandolin for the first time, and I just loved it. I just loved the sound of it, the shape of it even, and the way it looks. And I still love it, which is a testament to something.

I think what people call genre is just a question of orchestration. So, for instance, with Punch Brothers, you look at that band and say that's a bluegrass band, when really it's an orchestration choice.

I love putting on shows. I absolutely adore it - that's why I've been doing it now for so long.

We love music, and when it's good we flip. And we want to get to the core of why it's good.

What makes one type of music classical and one bluegrass and one folk - these things aren't what's important.

It's important to allow people to affect you. If we kept that at the forefront of our minds, maybe we wouldn't be as divided as we are.

I would love to be one of those fellows who combine formal and folk music approaches.

I'm a massive Roger Federer fan, and sometimes I can see in his game the willful development of a tactic or technique that doesn't come as naturally to him, like fixating on improving the backhand. And I'm thinking, Hit the forehand! It's what you do!

If you're sitting there going, 'Well, these particular genres are the only genres I like,' that's like saying, 'I only like books with this particular kind of cover.' Because that's all genre is. It's a discussion of texture.

Like a sporting event, live events are the one thing you can't have anytime you want them.

I love music so much. It's like the one thing I'm good at.

Generally speaking, I think one has to take reviews with a grain of salt, unless you know who the person is and what their qualifications are.

I'm just done downplaying how much I love Radiohead and how massive of an influence they are on what I do, because it's pretty obvious.

I don't feel that things need make their appeal exclusively to one demographic. I don't feel that there is truly great art that only appeals to people in a certain age range.

Having small children, you start thinking about how everything in your life revolves around doing the best you can for this little being, trying to make a good life for that person.

In my mind, there's this one 'super genre,' which is the only genre that matters, and that's the super genre of good music.

There are two genres of music: there's good music and there's bad music.

I celebrate three holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Telluride.

You go to the Grammys and you say, 'I don't care if I win or not,' and of course you care.

Great music is the only genre that actually matters, and the members of that club are far more similar to each other than they are to any genre they might be commonly associated with.

The power of live music is vast. Live music is a wonderful way to spend some time.

When they invented the mandolin, it was as if they were trying to come up with the least efficient means of extracting noise from a piece of wood.

I was raised fundamentalist Christian, and now I'm not that. It was not an act of rebellion or anything. For me, it was about being in a line of work where I was meeting so many different people and feeling like they all had legitimate points of view that I needed to consider and occasionally these were at odds with ideas that I was raised with.