72 Quotes by Matt Berninger

It’s not hard to connect with the music on an emotional level and get inside the songs. It’s odd, very vulnerable, and slightly embarrassing to be standing and singing and playing music in front of a bunch of strangers.

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 song ‘Humiliation’ is kind of about what if, outside of a dinner party or something, I was blown up by a drone missile, out by the pool. What an embarrassing way to go.

I’m not saying I’m not a moody guy sometimes, but I think I have a pretty normal balance.

I don’t want somebody telling my daughter who she can marry, or what she can do with her body. That’s what was at stake.

I’m doing a little freelance work, and I think everybody’s trying to take their minds off rock and roll for a little while and get some perspective.

I usually always think of characters and sometimes the characters are a little bit invented, so it’s nice to give these invented, blurry, personas an actually name. It makes me get closer to them or something like that. But they’re not all real, they’re weird amalgamations of reality.

Maybe because I have spent too much of my life in rock clubs. I don’t really go to parties anymore either. I’ll usually be in the bus by 11:30 after a show.

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.