Quotes from John Darnielle

You want the song to be at least at the same level of goodness throughout. Whereas with something you're doing live, a song dips and rises and that can actually be worked to the song's benefit.

Readings are more like weaving a tapestry. Possibly people are getting a cathartic release - but music is physical. Music pummels you. It's got a beat; it's loud. Whereas this is more cerebral.

For me, fiction isn't very cathartic. It can be a broad, long catharsis, but it's a whole different thing - whereas music is physical. Essentially, it goes in through your ear. Fiction is cerebral, necessarily. It can do emotional stuff. But they don't really compare - not for me.

Sometimes I'll write without the guitar or the piano, but most of the time I'll be playing and just improvising some words. And when I get something that sounds good, a line with a story in it, I'll try and tease it out and figure out where the story is going.

It usually happens that I have multiple different projects going on at once, and one can be referencing the other.

I write for a lot of places, so I'm on a lot of promo lists.

May we all emerge from winter with our strength renewed and any unwanted pieces left under the ice.

Life is hard, you're tired, and there's disease. The strategy that works for children is to be delighted by the things that delight you.

People talk about songwriting or comedy as creative expression, but life is creative expression. Table-making, even nursing, is extraordinarily creative.

I am at a place in my life where the more like a cave I can make my surroundings, the happier I am.

A song is fire. You react to it primally, instantly. You don't have to decide whether you like it, and you don't really have to sit down and think about it much after you're done listening to it. It really does run through you like wind.

I try not to write songs in which men glamorize their own need for approval from women. That's kinda a bogus way to go out. But I try to do this quietly. I'm not about to go around telling people how they should or shouldn't think. My feminism is for me.

I know the Bible pretty well. I'm not one of those guys who can immediately start quoting every book, but usually I know where to look to find certain themes.

People involved in my personal life make fun of me a lot for not being jaded.

It's a cliché to state that one should think like a child, but it's clear that kids know something that the world tries to make you unlearn later in life.

My son, who sees me almost every day of his life, will look at me and go, "I know that dude! I like that dude!" It's incredibly affirming.

A book is a journey: It's a thing you agree to go on with somebody, and I think every reader's experience of a book is going to be different.

I just started writing stuff to kill time on summer evenings. This is why I'm always telling people who ask me what they need to do to succeed to give up, do something else.

At 23, you can completely, literally reinvent yourself if you want to.

Metal has its own code of cool, but it's not really trying to be cool. And that was very refreshing to me, that metal is very much about expressing something that seems awesome to you even if, at the time, much of the world was going to mock and reject it.

The better I get at writing songs, the harder it seems to be to relate to people. But when I get on stage, I'm extremely happy.

Most of my interests in terms of writing are dark, so it's discordant how much I try to lock into the vibe of wherever I'm at. Inhabiting the life of the imagination is the nature of survival strategy - you build yourself little worlds to enjoy.

I always worry that I'm a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don't have exhaustive knowledge of much.

I pretty much just focus on making the records - unless I'm self-releasing them; then I do my own thing. But at some point, you have to stop worrying about chains of distribution, or it takes out of your time to write.