Quotes from James Murphy

I'm a very self-conscious person.

I don't drink beer, and I don't drink at home.

When Andy Kaufman performed, he was not just trying to be funny. He was playing with the notion of what it means to try to be funny, of what it means to be an audience expecting somebody to be funny. He was doing a dance and playing a game.

Warhol had resonance because it was high art and low art. And you could argue about it endlessly.

'Somebody's Calling Me' was written in my sleep, and the original was just the piano and the beat and the singing.

I have an interest in everything, but I don't have an interest in starting new careers.

There's a difference between a cheap lie and a beautiful lie.

I write songs all the time. Sometimes they're just weird songs I sing while changing a baby, or songs about annoying things that I sing to myself, or to friends while sitting at a bar, or about Christmas or New York.

My personality is based on an anonymity and failure. Failure and anonymity, those are my strengths - superiority from below.

Songs are songs, and to reduce them is to waste them.

I started playing in my first band when I was 12. I like to date myself by saying I was in a New Age band when it wasn't ironic; it was actually called new wave because it was new.

DJing is really, really pleasant. It's like having people over and making hors d'oeuvres.

Subway Symphony is a little idea I had to change the sound of the subway turnstiles into different pieces of music, depending on what station you're entering.

Making people dance has another function that has nothing to do with art, and I mean that in the most positive way possible. It's like food - if you're not eating it, you're doing something wrong. If they're not dancing, something is wrong.

I actually want to write a treatise in defence of pretension. I think the word 'pretension' has become like the word 'ironic' - just this catch-all term to distance people from interesting experiences and cultural engagement and possible embarrassment.

I am kind of, by definition, a hipster.

Producing is always really hard, and you can never tell who's going to be easy to get along with and who's going to be difficult.

I miss producing. I hate it when I do it, but I love it.

I've been to Manchester enough to know it's a real place. It's not Factory Records and the Smiths bicycling around. I get it. It's a modern city.

I don't see myself as necessarily a very creative person. I'm a technical guy.

To do a band properly does kind of mean you don't really get to do anything else.

I like clever lyrics, funny lyrics, dumb lyrics. I can never put my finger on what I like about them.

Anything that's resolvable is boring, musically. And if it's too chaotic, you don't feel tension; it's chaos.

The Fall was super powerful to me because of their covers. They were intimidating. I bought 'This Nation's Saving Grace' when it came out in 1985, and there was something about it that made me nervous. It terrified me.