18 Quotes by Jeffrey Lewis

There are people who are great technical players like Eric Clapton, and there are people who are great intuitive songwriters like Daniel Johnston. There are sometimes people who are great at both the technique and the creativity, the two sides of the coin, maybe Jimi Hendrix.

I realized I was not a great musical technician, if I was going to make anything interesting it would have to come from the creative side of me and not the craft side of me.

Unfortunately most easily-digested entertainment has as much actual content as a Spongebob Squarepants episode, so the trick is to try to fit actual nourishing content into enjoyable entertainment.

Everybody has a direct view of the person “behind” the art, so there is going to be a certain amount of awareness of who is making songs. But I like paintings where you can see the brush-strokes.

I never felt like I had a surface image to rely on that people would like – I always felt like my music would not be very fancy music, my voice is not very fancy, there is nothing hiding me from the audience.

I prefer artists who are creative more than artists who are technical, I think everybody would agree with that.

I usually think of art as having a measurable content of nourishment, whether factual or emotional or whatever, and I try to make sure that whatever I do has as much nourishment as I can muster.

Life’s a story don’t you doubt. Bad times give you something to talk about.

I don’t think talking about myself making songs is a very interesting topic, there are so many other more engaging things to think about and write about.