Andrew Bird Quotes

I've done my share of busking, and it's fun until it isn't. There are musicians in the subways that will make you cry, they're so good.

I think I'm still a little too intense for my own good sometimes.

Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.

I guess I'm attracted to more archaic words because they can be imbued with more meaning, because their definition is elusive.

My favorite literature to read is fairly dry history. I like the framework, and my imagination can do the rest.

Sometimes I think I don't have much choice in the matter. It's just what happens, and I'm following my instincts the whole time.

Songwriters can sort of get away with murder. You can throw out crazy theories and not have to back it up with data or graphs or research.

I think when I was pretty young I got really into the tone of my instrument and I remember just playing one note for an hour to just kind of feel the resonance of the violin.

I am, in some sense, a writer. Even though I kinda downplay the word thing, I do enjoy writing sometimes.

All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song.

I really like the sound of analog things where clearly there's something being touched. You can sense that something is handmade. So much with digital, there's a disconnect.

I've always had levity in my songs, so I like to turn things over, twist them around, and make fun of myself.

I'm a terrible Scrabble player.

There's a lot of interesting words, nomenclatures, in science.

I've always felt that dark lyrics with dark music is pretty useless. Maybe that's a strong statement - not useless, but for me, it's just boring.

The anti-aging advert that I would like to see is a baby covered in cream saying, 'Aah, I've used too much'

Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound.

The earth almost looks like it's packed down and dense from so many feet treading over it.

Honestly, I didn't have the patience for biology or history in an academic sense, but I always liked the kind of big questions.

The real drag is trying to fly from country to country, day of show, with all your gear. You get hassled all the time. It's hard trying to keep it together.

I definitely have to give myself permission, like on "Master Swarm," to rip a lead on that. Just play a violin solo that's - it's a bit showoff-y, but it's fun, so who cares?

I don't like super-descriptive modern fiction. I like, "Here's what was happening in 1582 all over the planet." Then that gets my imagination going.

Most of the songs that I appreciate are lyrically vague.

With the words, a lot of things start with questions. Some word kind of piques my interest, and I love the way it sounds, but I really don't know what it means. And I honestly don't care for a while.

Norman is a very up-close, personal, character drama and I'd like to do something more zoomed out, a little more pastoral, some sweeping epic. I'd like to try something different.

I didn't have the patience for the research, or anything like that. I just like how it sets the imagination off. It's just an area that's very fertile for great words. Great metaphors, potentially.

Sometimes the word dictated the melody.

It's like you don't know you're making a record unless you're half-killing yourself.

If you take a little time, let's say three weeks off, after recording a song, and you listen to it every other day, you're just going to know eventually.

It's not set in stone. I like to keep it rolling and changing, and so I am like, "Great, I get to remake my song."

The music that I write is often not necessarily full of doom and gloom. You'll notice in most of the darkest songs, the music is actually pretty peaceful and lulling.

When I'm onstage, I'm completely comfortable, and I feel very vital and alive.

Songwriting requires some sort of ceremony to even get the process started, and it can be somewhat arbitrary.

What's cool about indie rock is that one band can do effectively the same thing as another band, and one band nails it, and the other one doesn't. I like that elusiveness.

Sometimes I just think we're not meant to fly halfway around the world in a day. That some kind of mutation is going to happen.

I still play solo shows. And some of those shows are still some of the best, most gratifying shows.

People who are thinking about your music almost as much as you are, that almost never happens.

Every time I make a record, it's kind of like scarification or something. You work 15 hours until you're stupid. You're just kind of all jittery.

There's always that struggle between me wanting to keep [song] new and fresh and then be - I can never get with pop songs being so repetitive.

You can build up expectations for a song before you record it, and then it's like nothing's good enough in the studio.

Some of my earlier songs are kind of more about mental illness.

I think life is a wondrous thing. I'm happy to try pretty hard.

I just pay attention to what's in my head. That's my number-one rule.

I also don't believe that "everything happens for a reason," which is in a similar category of world-views.

Music as a social conduit has always been important to me.

The problem is, when you're working with orchestras, you only get the orchestra for about two hours before the performance to pull it all together, and that doesn't sound like a real collaboration.

I still kind of believe this absurd line that if you have to write it down, it's not worth remembering.

I create little challenges for myself, like, 'Okay, whatever you do in this song, you've got to somehow work in Greek Cypriots,' or something like that.

What you see with your eyes when you're making music is going to have a profound effect on what you hear.

Well, my main instrument is violin, but I think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin.