309 Quotes by Jack White

There’s Catholic guilt about things, then there’s the guilt of being the youngest of 10, so when nice things happen to you, you’re not really allowed to enjoy them.

I’m one of those people that you have to keep your eye on or I’ll wander off into the woods and forget to come back.

It’s kind of ridiculous that I find inspiration in just getting away from everything. But when you’ve gone through it, you realize that it’s the enemy. It’s a distraction from what you’re really doing. You’ve got to keep moving. Like a shark.

Saying you love something out loud with the wrong intonation in your face can damn you and destroy what you’re working on.

I gave myself over to music and art a long time ago, so I don’t get to relax and I don’t get to sit still. The best I can do is constantly create my own environment so it benefits what I need to accomplish in the next step.

When you put something out there into the world, there’s all these words you don’t want to hear, that you hope people don’t say. I don’t like anything that starts with ‘re’ – like retro, reinvent, recreate – I hate that. It’s always like living in the past – copying, emulating.

I’ve always worked to find really deep meaning of song and also at the same time having it covered in sugar, so it can be taken two or three different ways.

Worry means tormenting yourself with disturbing thoughts or fretting about things we have zero control over. If you live in the north there is no need to worry about the snow. You will get plenty each year. If you live in California or Texas you needn’t worry about rain because we won’t receive any.

This generation is so dead. You ask a kid, ‘What are you doing this Saturday?’ and they’ll be playing video games or watching cable, instead of building model cars or airplanes or doing something creative. Kids today never say, ‘Man, I’m really into remote-controlled steamboats.’