Will Oldham famous quotes

I think records and music are more appropriate and more respectful of the human soul than the churches are. And more respectful of the needs of humans to communicate with the aspects of themselves that are neglected by language.
-- Will Oldham

#Thinking #Soul #Church

I don't usually read reviews. I usually read the interviews, just because I figure it's a good way to try to do them better if I ever have to do them again.
-- Will Oldham

#Trying #Way #Interviews

I think that what trips up a lot of great musicians is that they become involved with too many things that aren't where their strengths lie.
-- Will Oldham

#Lying #Thinking #Musician

For a long time I've walked through this world with the desire, like in Rear Window, to look into other people's lives because I know that there is a way in which I am the same as so many of the strangers that I see.
-- Will Oldham

#People #Long #Desire

A record is something that isn't real or true. It's like cinema. It's a construction of something hyper-real and surreal and unreal all at the same time. You make a space that doesn't really exist. One of the big joys of being in this line of work is building the recorded versions of the songs.
-- Will Oldham

#Song #Real #Space

At the same time, you don't want to be blindsided at some point because you've taken too much comfort from knowing nothing. So you try to keep a little store of practical knowledge. At a certain point you have to pretend that something is true in order to have a relationship with the world.
-- Will Oldham

#Taken #Order #Knowing

Frank Sinatra's never been handsome, but he's one of my favorite singers. Who needs looks when you have a voice and power?
-- Will Oldham

#Voice #Looks #Singers

In the United States the government has become less important. So, it's democracy, but as each year passes it seems that the government plays less of a role in people's lives, and so they're living in whatever situation their employment imposes upon them more than they're living in a grand political system.
-- Will Oldham

#Government #Years #Play

With women, you always have to make an educated decision to figure out what they're thinking. It's not one that's necessarily sympathetic, always. Of course, we're all human beings, but the gender thing is big thing. And a great thing.
-- Will Oldham

#Thinking #Decision #Gender

Every recording session and tour is a very valuable time to me in terms of getting to spend time with the musicians - whether they're friends and family or people I've just met - because I don't have a job where I get to interact with people everyday.
-- Will Oldham

#Jobs #People #Everyday

On days where I feel the karma is in balance I'm not afraid of death. And when I feel it's weighing heavily on the negative side, then I get very scared and just think about eternal damnation and how unpleasant that would be.
-- Will Oldham

#Karma #Thinking #Balance

My hope has always been that each record could have its own audience. Of course, it's awesome to have a cumulative audience for more than one record, but I like the idea that there could be a record that an individual might like.
-- Will Oldham

#Ideas #Might #Records

There's very little admirable about being a pirate. There's very little functional about a pirate. There's very little real about a pirate.
-- Will Oldham

#Real #Pirate #Littles

I think that America in general is piratical. Every time we accept a paycheck for doing almost nothing, allowing us to live above the poverty line, we're engaging in piracy.
-- Will Oldham

#Thinking #America #Poverty

I write a song to be recorded. And to some extent to be performed, but definitely more to be recorded than performed, because the recording will last longer than a performance.
-- Will Oldham

#Song #Writing #Lasts

I'd like my records to reach as many people as possible, but I'm also thinking in terms of how I can keep from getting jaded or unhappy with the process.
-- Will Oldham

#Thinking #People #Unhappy

It's nice to be able to backtrack and not be embarrassed by the music you used to listen to.
-- Will Oldham

#Nice #Able #Used

It's O.K. to accept good fortune.
-- Will Oldham

#Accepting #Fortune #Good Fortune

Sometimes we need to tell ourselves that we're not going to do certain things, just in order to stay sane.
-- Will Oldham

#Order #Needs #Sometimes

Too much emphasis is put on American roots music when people try and place me. You know, I grew up listening to punk.
-- Will Oldham

#Roots #People #Listening

People are looking for fame or a focus, and I can't provide that.
-- Will Oldham

#People #Focus #Fame

Writing songs is a profession; so it's not an attempt to take things from my interactions with other people and for some reason give them to a total stranger to listen to. I find it offensive to hear other people do that.
-- Will Oldham

#Song #Writing #Giving

What is normally called religion is what I would tend to call music - participating in music, listening to music, making records and singing.
-- Will Oldham

#Listening #Singing #Records

When I was a kid, I always thought that acting was going to be the way to go.
-- Will Oldham

#Kids #Acting #Way

I think everybody works from a defensive position, for the most part, in the film industry.
-- Will Oldham

#Thinking #Film #Position

I need to go someplace faraway that doesn't have telephones and doesn't have a record player and doesn't have movie theaters and people walking down the street in order to not do anything.
-- Will Oldham

#Player #Order #People

I had a lot of time to myself, and I would listen to a lot of music, mostly music that I knew fairly well and had a relationship with. And I'd think, well, what is it that I've never been able to do that this person or people are able to do with this song? Why haven't I been able to do it, and what can they do that I wish I could do? And then I'd try to do that. I'd start each day getting into the songs, and I'd think about how I might get closer to this music that I love, but haven't been able to make before.
-- Will Oldham

#Song #Writing #Thinking

The songs are not meant to be real life. They're meant to have a psychic - rather than a factual - bearing on the listener. It's rare that a song grounded in reality moves me because I don't feel like I'm getting the whole story. Songs are made to exist in and of themselves, like a great James Jones or Robert Louis Stevenson novel - they're not autobiographical, and yet there's a reality in every single page. It's real life of the imagination.
-- Will Oldham

#Song #Real #Moving

The first music I bought when I was nine or 10 was pop music from the '50s and '60s, like The Everly Bros., Elvis, Del Shannon, The Flamingos, The Platters, whatever I could get my hands on. And then some musical things, like Camelot, Singing in the Rain and Hair.
-- Will Oldham

#Rain #Hair #Hands

It is more rewarding to be complicit with scarcity than excess.
-- Will Oldham

#Scarcity #Excess

As it turns out, as an adult I can have a very unpleasant, fierce and unforgiving temper at times. But I don't think I had that when I was a kid.
-- Will Oldham

#Kids #Thinking #Adults

Cities are made for enemies to destroy.
-- Will Oldham

#Cities #Enemy #Made

I do not want a personal relationship with my fans. Or to do anything that encourages them to think they have one with me. They can have a personal relationship with my songs. That's fine, but they don't know me.
-- Will Oldham

#Song #Thinking #Want

I don't like going to cities. I don't mind maybe being in a city sometimes for a few hours, but I pretty much don't like cities. I don't even like passing through them.
-- Will Oldham

#Cities #Mind #Sometimes

I don't like the idea of being surrounded by hidden things; people you can't see in buildings and cars.
-- Will Oldham

#Ideas #Car #People

I don't think that word - the word pirate - has any real meaning. Or it's something that's had meaning imposed on it.
-- Will Oldham

#Real #Thinking #Pirate

I figure it's okay to make certain rules, whether or not people despise you for it at the time.
-- Will Oldham

#People #Despise #Certain

I have more respect for somebody who points at his ideal - in this case, the ideal of the pirate - and then becomes something that's more radical, more exciting, more subversive than a pirate could ever be.
-- Will Oldham

#Pirate #Cases #Exciting

I make the songs and part of making them is singing them. But what you hear is not me. It's the song. It's through me.
-- Will Oldham

#Song #Singing

Whenever I see something that looks like it could be good - whether it's on vinyl, CD or cassette - if it's not too expensive, I'll take a chance.
-- Will Oldham

#Cds #Looks #Chance