194 Quotes by Stephen Malkmus

If someone’s really busy listening to other CDs, and worried about what’s new and what’s truly relevant for discourse now, maybe it isn’t that interesting. To me it is, because I’m tuned into that and that’s what I like, so it’s interesting to me. It’s all I can do.

What I love about music, when you can look at something and be like, “Wow, what’s this all about?” You can’t really picture what these people look like – is it one guy, or a band making music in a garage?

The best I do, if I’m just playing around and riffing in a fantasy world, and then I’ll write something down. Hopefully I write it down.

Basically, no one else gives me any opinions on lyrics. I don’t ask for them. If they did, I would listen.

I would just imagine there’s a criticism for just about everything, if you want to take something down. No one’s invincible. The Jicks are a work in progress and we don’t think everything we do is the bee’s knees or something, we’re just trying our best to get turned on by what we’re doing.

You know, the songs that are self-conscious or jerky, they are that way, but the other ones aren’t, so that’s a good thing. Some of the songs are Beck-jokey, but the others, they have heart in them.

If a voice is just too nice, without an edge, it kinda all flows by. You forget it. You don’t listen to the lyrics.

I'm into Zwan. Zwan was good.

I had another version of 'We Dance' that was kind of glam-rock. It was a little 'Taking Care of Business' mixed with Simon and Garfunkel. But on the album, I did it in a down-and-out way, like the Frogs or David Bowie or something - a little torch song thing.