127 Quotes by Ben Folds

I don't leave my neighborhood. I don't go anywhere. There are four blocks I live in and there are two coffee shops, one at each end of the block... so I don't do much driving... Some people would say they never see me because I don't go anywhere. I stay in the blue state of Nashville, in my bubble.

Life barrels on like a runaway train where the passengers change, they don't change anything, you get off someone else can get on.

I was pretty much a dork growing up. Going up in front of a crowd and being an idiot was a relief when I was a kid. But talking to two or three people at once and being myself was impossible. And being myself while singing a song was more than impossible; I would've rather died. I get really nervous and tend to want to be an idiot.

Was I gung-ho about changing society when I was 18? I don't know about that. When you're 18, you're really into yourself and what's happening to your body. But I definitely had some ideas. This malaise is not confined to America either. I spotted that same attitude in kids in Eastern Europe before the fall of communism.

People rush around in the summer to try and find like-minded musicians to put together. Packages are all the rage. I prefer keeping it smaller, having a tour that's manageable -- both for me and the audience -- and Rufus and I go together in certain ways. We're both out of step with any kind of music scene. We don't really fit in anywhere. I think we feel similarly disenfranchised -- in a good way. Also, I can listen to Rufus every night. That's important.

It's not safe, but yeah, I can flip a piano over. You take it on this side where there's not really as much weight.

I had to play a George Harrison song at a benefit a couple nights ago, and it was really hard for me. Obviously it wasn't my world.

The main thing is that we performed the songs, then went to the speakers - if we liked it, we kept it; if we didn't, then we did it again. That seems like the most obvious way to record, but it really isn't the way we make records in this day and age. This is just very old-fashioned.

They’re into something that is too big to be expressed through their clothes.