Quotes from John Darnielle

I really love Durham more than any place I've ever been; some small towns can be really provincial and strangling, but Durham is the best city in the world.

I always assumed people wanted to hear me tell stories, but then I had 'The Sunset Tree.' It turned out, my own stories were the ones that registered with people the hardest.

I think youth will always be connected to the strongest music at the time because... I don't want to use the word 'tribal,' but there was this sort of familial affiliation that people would feel with the music they were listening to.

I still can't manage to keep a journal, and people have been telling me to since the fourth grade.

People will complain that they don't want to wait around for lightning to strike, but why not? If you invest yourself in chance, the potential for disappointment is pretty low.

Sometimes I do 'So Desperate' solo in the middle of the set. I really love to sing that song.

I love Joan Didion, but I love her writing. I don't think meeting her could solve my problems or make me understand the world better.

Metal isn't necessarily aggressive. There's metal that's contemplative, there's metal that's sad, and there's metal that's exuberant. No genre is limited in what it can express.

If I go see a band, and they play, like, zero from any of their old albums, I'm very happy about that. I do not want to see the bands of my youth playing the songs of my youth. I hate that.

I watched 'Fame,' and I just love the choreography. It just gives me a place to be in another zone.

People want you to play the songs they know. I try not to reflect too much, and I don't really like to focus too much on myself.

As an artist, you always have to be growing. You don't just want to do what you already know people like.

Labor for a lot of people has a negative connotation. But not for me. I always want to be working.

Adulthood is interesting to adults. But I would never want to write about stuff I dont feel everybody can connect to.

I've written a lot about southern California, but I don't use the same characters. Leave the people in the songs in the songs, is my philosophy.

One or two people have named their children after characters in my songs. That's pretty intense.

I think there are some writers - like, if you read Kerouac, I think you probably need to take a little break before you sit down to the typewriter because he's the type of writer whose voice infects you.

I was writing poetry, and the Mountain Goats was an outgrowth of that.

A Cat Stevens record isn't just Cat Stevens' ideas. It's Cat Stevens and all the musicians who play with Cat Stevens, right?

At my high school, there were always kids carrying acoustic guitars around, which is why I named my band the Mountain Goats. I didn't want to seem like one of those guys who brought his guitar to the party whether you asked him to or not.

My songs tend to sprint toward some epiphany and then explode.

When you're born into a showbiz family, the deck is stacked against you.

People think of me as a nice person because, I think, I have grown into a nice person.

Gender relations are a sad story of men talking trash about women all over the world.