Will Tweedy Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes it's liberating to confront horrible things in lyrics as a way to master the shadow-self that exists in everyone. — Jeff Tweedy

Academic historians of the last hundred years or so get all stiff and tweedy when you suggest that people will go to all ends for the sake of their religion. They'll assure you that religion is just a cover for other, more "rational" motivations. They would prefer to explain the world in terms of economic self-interest, of class warfare, or of dynastic imperatives. But has not the early twenty-first century made it catastrophically clear how many people (and not just the desperate, either) are ready to leap over the brink in the name of their religion? The same was certainly true of "the age of discovery." While greed should certainly be given her due, there is no reason to think that da Gama was not perfectly sincere when he said that he came in search of Christians and spices. — Michael Krondl

I've never been healthier. I haven't had a cigarette in two years. I run four or five miles, four or five times a week. I've been healthy and having a really good time. — Jeff Tweedy

I always think I don't have any songs, I don't have anything I'm working on, and I get in the studio and realize there are 20 things I'm thinking about. It's just kind of second nature. — Jeff Tweedy

Some of our superiors were indeed men of brains and learning and disinterested goodwill, but some were stuffed shirts, and some incompetents, and some timid souls escaping the fray, and some climbers, and some as bitter and jealous as some of us were at being inadequately appreciated. But still there they were, up in the sunshine above the smoke, a patch-elbowed tweedy elite that we might improve when we joined it, but that we never questioned. Especially during the Depression, when every frog of us was lustful for a lily pad. — Wallace Stegner

You obviously don't really forget how to play the old songs; you just don't have to spend so much time convincing yourself that you remember them. Way less mental energy is spent swimming around in lyrics you've already written and chords you've already played. — Jeff Tweedy

I really enjoy playing solo acoustic. I think it's good for me as a songwriter to stay in touch with what it takes to make a song work by yourself. — Jeff Tweedy

The sublime moment seems to be only a product of allowing yourself to get through, to get to a lot of stuff in your life, write about a lot of stuff and not edit yourself. That is a great lesson to learn for anybody that writes or creates in anyway, to be able to make something without being good or bad. — Jeff Tweedy

I'm usually pretty happy. I don't ever really get disturbed in any way, or feel like I need to go back and change something. — Jeff Tweedy

My highest aspirations as a songwriter are that people would sing my songs or know songs I've written sometime in as far into the future as I feel comfortable seeing. — Jeff Tweedy

Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It's not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it's just like turning on the faucet. That's just the nature of it. — Jeff Tweedy

Even when I don't think I'm writing, I'm writing. There's some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it's collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that's when they come out. — Jeff Tweedy

I like making songs up. Whether or not they're great songs or good songs, whatever. It's something I've always done, and I definitely feel like I've gotten better at it. — Jeff Tweedy

bees and elephants and dogs piled up in squirmin' mounds like Loma's dang cats tryin' to keep warm in the wintertime. Does all this make any sense, Will Tweedy?" "Yessir, Grandpa." I wanted to go lay down. But I also wanted some more answers. "Grandpa, uh, why you think Jesus said ast the Lord for anything you want and you'll get it? 'Ast and it shall be given,' the Bible says. But it ain't so." I felt blasphemous even to think it, much less say it out loud. Grandpa was silent a long time. "Maybe Jesus was talkin' in His sleep, son, or folks heard Him wrong. Or maybe them disciples tryin' to start a church thought everbody would join up if'n they said Jesus Christ would give the Garden a-Eden to anybody believed He was the son a-God and like thet." Grandpa laughed. Gosh, I'd get a whipping if Papa knew what was going on with the Word in his kitchen. "All I know," he added, "is thet folks pray for food and still go hungry, and — Olive Ann Burns

I don't know if experimental is a word I would ever use comfortably. — Jeff Tweedy

I know my lies are always wishes. — Jeff Tweedy

I don't really feel like you're making a record unless you pay attention to it. — Jeff Tweedy

Stop trying to treat music like it's a tennis shoe, something to be branded. If the music industry wants to save money, they should take a look at some of their six-figure executive expense accounts. All those lawsuits can't be cheap, either. — Jeff Tweedy

I think I always thought of the guitar as the vehicle to be able to make some musical idea up. The only appeal to learning more chords was having more chords to put into songs. I never got too wrapped up in becoming technically good. So writing songs happened pretty simultaneously with learning how to play the guitar. — Jeff Tweedy

I think that there's a lot of good will that exists between musicians and the people that support them and listen to them. — Jeff Tweedy

I have always thought it was important to maintain some connection for myself to what it takes to make a song work by myself, to put a song across to an audience by myself. — Jeff Tweedy

Internet is radio for a lot of people. It's a place to get music and hear music, and no amount of clamping down will change that. — Jeff Tweedy

I think somehow you need to get to a certain point in your life where the notion of failure is absurd. — Jeff Tweedy

For the most part I stand by all of records. I just always like the one I've done most recently the best and I think that's the whole point. — Jeff Tweedy

I don't think you can be good in life without acknowledging the part of you that isn't good. — Jeff Tweedy

Avant-garde is the one area of music that has never changed. It doesn't mean anything. — Jeff Tweedy

I spent a fair amount of time editing the lyrics and allowing the song to kind of evolve ... anytime there's anything worthwhile, it certainly 'feels' like it happened on the spur of the moment, but it's a composite of lots of spurs of the moment, hopefully. And over time, you catch up with those, and then you have a full set of lyrics you've thought of and you feel comfortable singing. — Jeff Tweedy

Everything alive must die. Every building built to the sky will fall. Don't try to tell me my everlasting love is a lie. — Jeff Tweedy

I guess I don't think there's any reason to feel guilty about having joy in your life, regardless of how bad things are in the world. — Jeff Tweedy

I didn't want to admit that I was falling into a cliche. — Jeff Tweedy

Once you're an addict, you're always an addict, so just because I found something good to do doesn't mean I'm not going to hurt myself doing it. — Jeff Tweedy

I still have a lot of faith that there's very few people who are savvy enough to actually produce a good sounding copy of the record. — Jeff Tweedy

Penny Tweedy took over the running of The Meadow as a businesswoman, with a tough attitude...Behind the Cheer smile and the porcelain sparkle of her teeth, behind the radiance and the friendliness and the warmth--behind all the charm, gentility, and good Episcopalianism--was a mind with a thermostat idling at sixty degrees. — William Nack

I always found the concept of a tortured artist distasteful. — Jeff Tweedy

I've been obsessed with seeing life through music. My records, my relationship with records, my relationship with rock stars, everything that surrounds it, has been really one of the only ways that I ever started to understand the world. — Jeff Tweedy

Even the most dismal and hopeless-sounding Wilco music, to my ears, has always maintained a level of hope and consolation. — Jeff Tweedy

I think art is a consolation regardless of its content. It has the power to move and make you feel like you're not. — Jeff Tweedy

We'd been noticing how much more important the internet had become - once information is out there in the world now, anyone can get it. Since that was beginning to happen with the record anyway, we figured, OK, let's just stream it for free ourselves. — Jeff Tweedy

I am an American aquarium drinker — Jeff Tweedy

I think there's a curiosity that can make you feel anxious as to what the world's going to make of what you're doing. It's not necessarily what you're going to get back in terms of record reviews or how people talk about your record, it's getting on the road and playing the new songs live. — Jeff Tweedy