Grace is what matters in anything - especially life, especially growth, tragedy, pain, love, death. That's a quality that I admire very greatly. It keeps you from reaching out for the gun too quickly. It keeps you from destroying things too foolishly. It sort of keeps you alive.
Jeff Buckley
I'm actually the son of Mary Guibert. My mother was born in the Panama Canal zone and came to America when she was five with my grandmother and grandfather, and that was the family I knew. Everybody sang; everybody had songs all the time, and they loved music.
All flowers in time bend towards the sun, I know you say there's no one for you, But here is one.
I want to be ripped apart by music. I want it to be something that feeds and replenishes, or that totally sucks the life out of you. I want to be dashed against the rocks.
I'm lying in my bed, blanket is warm, this body will never keep me safe from harm. I still feel your hair, black ribbons of coal. Touch my skin to keep me whole. If only you'd come back to me. To feel you at my side, wouldn't need no Mojo Pin to keep me satisfied.
Sensitivity isn't being wimpy. It's about being so painfully aware that a flea landing on a dog is like a sonic boom. I enjoy a lot of mystery.
People have a certain perfection about them, no matter who they are. Like when Janis Joplin sang. Gorgeous!
Words are really beautiful, but they're limited. Words are very male, very structured. But the voice is the netherworld, the darkness, where there's nothing to hang onto. The voice comes from a part of you that just knows and expresses and is.
I don't really need to be remembered. I hope the music's remembered.
Maybe I'm too young to keep good love from going wrong, but tonight you're on my mind, so you never know.
I like a spirituality with a God that knows how to drive a car, that knows how to take his girl to the dance club, dance all night, have a little drink, kiss the kid when they come back in and go to sleep. God doesn't need a chauffeur - he needs to drive himself.
I don't see people. I don't see men and women at all. When I see them, I see... their mothers and fathers. I see how old they are inside. Like when I look at the president, or anybody in a record company, or a store owner, I may see a little boy behind the counter with the face of an old man. And that's who I talk to.
You can tell everything from the eyes.
The most audacious thing I could possibly state in this day and age is that life is worth living. It's worth being bashed against. It's worth getting scarred by. It's worth pouring yourself over every one of its coals.
Certain emotions just take you to the notes - being furious, heroic, sad, erotic, when rain comes.
Kiss me out of desire, but not consolation.
She's a tear that hangs inside my soul forever.
They will accuse me of stealing from my father. They already stand in baited judgement, waiting for my first move, waiting to dump their loads of garbage on me.
I just want to be a guy with a guitar.
Critics... They're like traffic cops. They say what they have to say, then leave, and another guy moves in ,and he has his say - and it's often just the opposite. The result is either critical acclaim or critical murder, and neither has any bearing on my music or direction.
Words are beautiful but restricted. They're very masculine, with a compact frame. But voice is over the dark, the place where there's nothing to hang on: it comes from a part of yourself that simply knows, expresses itself, and is.
Life's too short and too complicated for people behind desks, people behind masks to be ruining other people's lives, initiating force against other people's lives on the basis of their income, their color, their class, their religious beliefs, whatever.
Maybe someday, I'll just make, like, a complete on-demand record that everybody wants to hear. But that would be impossible and, also, I just changed my mind. I don't think I'll ever do that.
I became a human jukebox, learning all these songs I'd always known, discovering the basics of what I do. The cathartic part was in the essential act of singing. When is it that the voice becomes an elixir? It's during flirting, courtship, sex. Music's all that.
A tune has to resonate with whatever is happening around it.
I just think too much sometimes.
Thinking so hard on her soft eyes and memories of the signs that it's over. It's over.
There are thousands of great artists that wouldn't be doing the same kind of work if there were no music business machine. The ones who are popular would be doing much different work, too. Michael Bolton would be pumping gas.
I've always liked the electric guitar better. Even though the acoustic can be a very sexy and mysterious instrument, I can go to way more places with an electric.
The people who raised me musically are my mother, who is a classically trained pianist, and my stepfather.
Maybe I'm not a good enough artist that people just think of me. Maybe in the future, I'll bloom into something that will just make people look at me for what I am.
I am very observant of people's character.
I think that all people are many people. I think all people have many, many, many different souls inside, and they just shift from one to the other.
I've always felt that the quality of the voice is where the real content of a song lies. Words only suggest an experience, but the voice is that experience.
I do like structure, and I'd love to be better at it.
To young to hold on and to old to just break free and run.
There was a time when I stopped singing, between 16 and 19, but that was done on purpose, maybe as a punishment, maybe as a cure.
You can't be, like, smashing guitars against Marshall stacks all the time. As a matter of fact, after a while, it just looks like posing - it never really gets down to any message or any real expression.
I don't really go on what people say so much; I go on their voice. I go on their energy at the time. I go on how close their arms are folded into their chest.
When I sing, my face changes shape. It feels like my skull changes shape... the bones bend.
I have a lot of my mother in me, but I was just born with the same parts as my father. I don't sound like him. I mean, I can do an impression of him right now, and I do not sound like him. I sound like me. My sense of rhythm I learned from my mother. My melodies, I think sometimes, I get from my mother.
The Smiths hasn't been equaled. That goes for the composition of the songs, the lyrics, and the performance.
Critics try to pin so many different inaccuracies on me and my music; they look at the complicated things and try to simplify them. They think they can nail your whole life down just by knowing the bare bones of your history in partaking in 10 minutes of conversation.
Music was like my first real toy. I was an only child for a while, and I was alone a lot of the time - and I liked it. I still like being alone.
I'm always writing and reflecting on life. I want to suck it all in.
I sacrificed my anonymity for my father, whereas he sacrificed me for his fame.
'Grace' is basically a death prayer. Not something of sorrow, but of just casting away any fear of death. No relief will come - you really just have to stew in your life until it's time to go. But sometimes, somebody else's faith in you can do wonders.
I don't see myself in an ivory tower.
I just let the emotion dictate what the arrangement is.
My personal aesthetic is to be affected directly by everything about what you're seeing... I don't mind being dashed on the rocks... My most base act of defiance is to live a long time and still rock.
