72 Quotes by Matt Berninger

I never sit and fill a journal with lyrics. Most of the time I'm trying to write a feeling, not a story. I'm not necessarily trying to describe the details of a place or event so much as the feeling of the thing. It is a kind of weird alchemy that is elusive until it feels right.

A person with grace is somebody who's socially graceful or is a classy person, but sometimes you just feel the opposite of that, and you just feel like a jerk and a loser and a weirdo.

Getting on stage and performing and standing under lights is such an unsettling experience - in a good and bad way - but it's the only place I can go to feel comfortable.

The lyrics are what I work on the hardest, but I'm not trying to make a perfectly clear message or anything like that. In fact, I'm usually trying to avoid saying something too directly, because usually that rings false anyway.

I'm a stubborn guy that loses his temper, sometimes driving the station wagon in the wrong direction for hours and hours and never admitting that he's gone the wrong way.

'Alligator' was the first record that anyone paid attention to, and it seemed like it was the screamy songs that got us that attention.

People will dig their heels in and fight for the things they love and against the things they hate.

I love to make songs out of some of those shadows - you know, some of the things you lie awake thinking about, social anxieties and romantic insecurities and all that stuff.

I do a lot of editing and switching around and putting little pieces together to get the right mood and personality, and it takes me forever to get a song finished.