101 Quotes by Phil Elverum

I only had two real tasks [while in Norway]: gathering dead trees to burn from the surrounding small forest and getting water from a hole in a frozen stream. The rest of the time I wandered around, obsessed over my life dramas, stared into space, read books, wrote letters, made up songs, went crazy and eventually snapped out of my misery and noticed the dawn

After I made 'A Crow Looked at Me,' I remember people saying things to me like, 'You've made a beautiful tribute to Genevieve.' And I felt like, no! No no no, I haven't. I made a tribute to my own destruction and desolation. This is not a portrait of her. That's not who she was. She wasn't just a person who died.

I want to create a life that is just healthy and peaceful - an enclave, really, of retreat. It's not helpful for the big picture. It's totally selfish to run away like that.

I grew up without religion, but my parents have always been somewhat mystical about nature: The mountain is looking at us, stuff like that.

I'm actually not fussy. I enjoy getting into it and talking about anything, really. It feels good.

If I wanted to make big, bombastic, distorted, echo-y, trippy music, the atmospheric stuff, a studio is nice. But it's nice to know that it's not necessary.

It would be amazing to write a song that could be sung 100 years from now by a teenage girl and still be relevant to her - that's a dream of songwriting, maybe.

I consume the news daily. I'm not avoiding it.

Eric's Trip is still a huge influence on me. The style of those recordings and the rawness of them is very inspiring. And the density of the distorted parts, amazing.