104 Quotes by Ben Gibbard

As a songwriter, I’m not necessarily writing about myself or my life.

Everybody has a language or code that they use with their wife or their girlfriend or boyfriend or what have you. It’s a language aside from the language they have with strangers. I’ve always been maybe an abuser of alliteration, but I’ve always loved it and I like how those words sound together.

There’s a cinematic quality that happens in my mind when I hear something that really lands. An album is just a journal of a life moving through time.

Our band is very polarizing. There are people who absolutely can’t stand us, and people who absolutely can’t live without us. I’d rather spark those kind of polar-opposite feelings than have people be indifferent.

I have always been very open and earnest about some things in my life, some things that are not directly in my life, but they’re twirling around me at the time.

I feel that we are currently living in a world that is similar to late ’50s, early ’60s kind of world.

People always talk about how time flies; it's become sort of a colloquialism now. You don't really understand it until you reach your late 30s and early 40s - and I'm sure time will move even faster as I get older.

I think that the wonderful thing about music and about songs is that you can listen to a three-minute song whenever you feel you need it.

I think a lot of people who become music fans have that moment where they break from their parents' music, they break from the radio and MTV - at least in my generation, they did, and MTV isn't really a thing anymore. And you discover something that defines you, that is outside of the mainstream.