Quotes from Beck

The repercussions of what you put out and what people gravitate to in your music never registered at all. I never had that thing that maybe other bands have - a specific idea of what they are and what their sound is.

To me, 'rock star' conjures up something like a mystic: someone who sees himself as above other people, someone who has the key to the secret that people want to know.

What Spotify pays me is not even enough to pay the musicians playing with me or the people working on the discs. It's not working. Something is going to have to give.

When my nephew was 3 and 4, he would say the most genius things. He said, You're hammer macho with FBI dogs. I thought it was just one of those great lines.

I never had any expectations of winning a Grammy. It wasn't something I was set on, that I was hoping and praying and starving for.

I always loved art shows at schools. My friends with kids would go, and I would go with them. It's some of my favorite art... It's more about creativity than the grand statement of an agenda.

Originally, the lyrics to "Girl" were really upbeat, and then it didn't work for me somehow. You need the dichotomy. If you're doing something happy and light, you need the shadows.

I came up in a time when Springsteen, the Stones, Dylan, and the Beatles were still dominant. For every magazine cover with a new band, there were five covers with one of those guys.

I think trying to be offbeat is the most boring thing possible.

When you work with somebody for a long period of time, you develop a shorthand with everything.

I enjoy the collaboration. I always envied people in bands who got to have that interaction. I've done so many albums where I've been in the studio for 14 hours a day for six months just trying to come up with things on my own. It's a nice change helping other people with their music and not being all about what I'm trying to do myself.

I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out.

Sometimes I'll have an idea for a story or have a subject, and that will inspire lyrics, but most of the time, hopefully, they already exist somewhere else.

I didn't want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial.

[Early on,] the attitude was that what I was doing wasn't music.

When I was a kid and putting out my first records, there was a lot made out of the fact that the '50s/'60s generation was so dominant.