Quotes from James Mercer

Meeting Perry Farrel was kind of cool. He's such an icon, and I was such a fan of Jane's Addiction.

Honestly, humans are social creatures that really crave intimacy, and I think that the friends I have who are trying to somehow go it alone are suffering for it.

There's no real reason for me to be so obsessed with trying to understand the true nature of things. You can live a perfectly happy life being utterly confused and not knowing.

I do like talking with friends about big concepts, you know, the stuff that will ruin a party. To me, the party hasn't begun until we're talking about the nonexistence of God.

The way I was brought up, there was a little bit of prodding to do something more practical, and I wasted a lot of time trying to be a practical person.

My dad was a Navy munitions officer, and by the end of his career, he was a specialist in nuclear weapons.

The part of modern pop music I don't know much about is hip hop.

I think perfect dates involve walking a lot, and not a bunch of driving around in cars. Ideally, you can walk together and go to a restaurant, and then walk from there to another nice place - this is, I guess, because of really great dates that I've had with my wife here in Portland.

I really know so little about recording, and I'm learning as I go.

I think that once you start writing songs, you start developing a library of ideas that you can go and take from, so it gets easier as you go.

So happy that Broken Bells is a thing in my life and really cool in so many ways. Not only, like, as something to sell records and be a band and whatnot, but just to give me an outlet and give me a fresh approach on things.

The fact that I'm often pushing my voice as hard as I can is from playing in nightclubs in Albuquerque where you don't have a good sound system.

Maybe it's just parenthood that puts you in a situation where you just have to develop a new attitude, I guess, about things.

I remember being in high school, and you had to draw those lines and define yourself. I don't think when I was in high school I would have been willing to admit that I liked the Shins. I was into TSOL and Black Flag. I probably would have listened to the Shins secretly in my bedroom.

My hope is that one day I'll be able to work and have a quieter life, but still a creative life.

Lyrically, I think I'm frustrated with this whole process of trying to figure out what I believe about the world and life. I don't like to adopt a sort of guiding philosophy.

Life is sad. People, you know, are going to pass, and you know that you will one day.

When I started The Shins, it really was just me, alone, but it was still The Shins. I was totally recording stuff and writing songs as The Shins and all of that. So the beginning inception of the whole thing was some sort of a lie, I guess.

The Shins is, in a way, a recording project that turned into a live band. So I don't really keep myself beholden to any rules when I'm in the studio for Shins. I just gotta get it done as best I can.

There is pressure that comes with everything being a big deal. I remember thinking, 'I need to survive the Shins. I don't know what I'm going to do to make a living otherwise, but I really don't want to do the Shins right now.'

I was a regular dork. I was a kid who was scrawny and all that, and probably kind of dumb or something. I wasn't unordinary; I wasn't extraordinary.

I'm trying to avoid having regrets about missing opportunities. That would be the worst thing. Like having an audience waiting, and not working hard enough, and coming out with a record that disappointed them.

My dad and I get into it all the time. He loves to discuss politics much more than I do and we have pretty heated conversations.

I suppose, if someone was into baseball for an extended period of time during their formative years, they're always going to be interested in it.