194 Quotes by Stephen Malkmus

Almost every band has somebody who’s the main songwriter and who has a vision, a very clear idea of how a song should be.

We’re not on a desperate mission to write chart compatible stuff.

It’s normally in the morning, just playing around. And I’m not saying everything I make is great, but that’s what I do. I can’t even remember how I wrote stuff.

I’m not dying for everyone to hear everything we do. Forty minutes every two years is sensible.

The narrative songs were well-written, like an article in The New Yorker. They’re nice and pat. They’re more like I’m just showing I can do that when I write a song like that. It’s not my true calling.

Lou Reed is something like a personal favorite of mine, but you could always put me into that drawer of singers who can’t really sing, who speak their songs.

Maybe I don’t have the patience to make a virtue of necessity – the patience to carry something all the way through, and to actually say something. Lately, the songs are more jagged and they don’t really lend themselves to that. I just take it one bit at a time.

If you’d rather learn how to ride a horse or something, I would say do that. That’ll keep you out of trouble. You would think a band would get you in trouble, but I think it’s the opposite.

I’ve wanted to not play as much. I would like to just sing now. Even though I don’t think I’m a great singer, I wouldn’t mind just – not being a frontman, per se, but singing and not playing.