Quotes from Beck

I can't tell you how many things I've worked on where I sat on it for a few years, and then somebody else did something very similar. Whether it's some weird vocal effect you hear on another record, or a drum beat, or even a song title, a subject matter, or a mixture of different kinds of music.

No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.

I'm a musician. I'm not, like, a personality. I've never really pretended to perform that kind of function.

I have heard some stuff that might be influenced by my records, but it's usually pretty wacky and off-the-wall, which is kind of annoying, to be frank.

You can't meditate on walking or certain human habits. You concentrate too much on the way you walk, and you'll start walking pretty weird.

We play a hip-hop song and suddenly 25 people on the left jump up and put their hands in the air; then you play Lost Cause and they're like, I don't know about this one.

You can't please everybody, man.

The limitations are limitless.

Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother's face, her aspect and her attitude.

Every time you go in, it's like starting over. You don't know how you did the other records. You're learning all over. It's some weird musician amnesia, or maybe the road wipes it out.

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

I think you have to keep a childlike quality to play music or make a record.

I did that Grammys thing - I did a little freeform poem.

I didn't go to high school. I never felt connected to people my age.

It's really hard for me to commit, one way or the other. I was just always creating and seeing what came out.

There's never any pressure on the music having to be something.

Sometimes things in life take a few years to digest, and they find their way into the work later on. Sometimes I'm writing about things from eight years ago-they just took a long time to distill and come out in the appropriate way.

In the past it seemed like I was making fun of rap a little bit. But it was more me making fun of myself, since I'm not technically a rapper, whatever that means.

I had long hair when I was a teenager.

As society changes, as politics change, as people change, certain songs still seem to resonate.

If we look at the fact that record covers are essentially advertisements for the music, we acknowledge a function and purpose to draw in the prospective buyer.

Tonight the city is full of morgues, and all the toilets are overflowing. There's shopping malls coming out of the walls, as we walk out among the manure. That's why I pay no mind.

I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.

There's more things that I'd like to do. You know, each song is a little bit of a puzzle. I see most of them as just failed attempts.