Quotes from Ariel Pink

I envisioned all these people who had been admired for having been freaks in their own time, and I saw myself in line with them.

In the years between 2000 and 2004, I always got the feeling that people were just starting to hear about me, and they were all late to the game. I'd be out playing shows for records that I recorded back in 1999 that were just coming out.

I couldn't imagine what it's like to be a journalist talking about music. You're left with empty descriptions; you probably have to make up a sort of weird cocktail of band influences and references to other music to get your point across.

I probably would never be caught wearing a baseball cap. Hats are difficult to me because they tend to be too big for my head. They don't fit right, and I feel ridiculous.

If you are going to go to Heaven, I'm going to Heaven. But I don't believe in Heaven.

I always wanted to get into rock music so I could cover up my real personality, change my voice, and create a false self to hide behind.

You have all these song titles and song time, and you put it in a certain order, and you slap a cover on it. That's a record. That's how I've seen all my records.

I have a strong impulse to protect history and time and the lineage of events.

I really wanted to make the worst thing: the thing that even people who liked bad, terrible music wouldn't like - the stuff that people would ignore, always. Something really, really stupid. Something that is destined for failure.

I had a very active inner life as a kid. There's a good album or two worth of stuff that I can bring out on a rainy day if I have a loss for inspiration or whatever - even now.

I get to live down my reputation for being cantankerous if I slowly evolve towards being a really good live show.

I love everybody. You have to embrace all facets of humanity; love and accept everyone as being part of yourself.

I love having the impulsivity to change course. I think it's key to keeping things fresh.

I always thought, 'I could go the route of saying some controversial things and have it explode, just do it like that. But I don't do that.' But of course, it wasn't really up to me.

If you spend the first 30 years of your life only trying to look good, you're not going to know yourself very well. If you got it, flaunt it.

Oh, I had my gothy phase, but I was never a troublemaker or anything like that. I was a little bit introspective, a little bit morbid. I was small for my age, so I was bullied and that kind of stuff.

People should be more passive with what they consider trustworthy.

The world is full of bands and bullshit, and if I'm doing a stupid art project like rock 'n' roll then I want to spare my audience as much as possible.

I do enjoy my solo time ... I want to stay home and do soundtracks and watch TV in my underwear with a keyboard on my lap and just be a couch potato.

You can pout about the way the world is as long as you want, but that's not going to change it. You've got to figure it out.

My music has always been my solo project.

If you don't appeal to kids, to the zeitgeist, you get thrown on the scrapheap.

The early pictures of me you see online, in just T-shirts and hoodies - I'm still that guy with the hoodie. But what you don't get to see in most of those pics is that I had these red clogs on that had, like, eyeballs on the ends of them that I drew on. That speaks a little bit more to what I was going after, stylistically.

There's no relationship to the narrative anymore. People want their own interpretation of history. We're compartmentalizing, forgetting what came directly before, like it's not a big deal. That, to me, is a crime.