Quotes by Phil Elverum

I'm artistically satisfied and happy.

I need some time to write songs and work on my thing, but I'm just living my life and doing family stuff and letting inspiration come when it comes. But I also don't feel a desperate need to keep pushing myself into people's faces to stay cool and relevant.

I like the experience being in the audience and being overwhelmed by sound, like thick, oppressive loud sound and distortion.

I think that as a kid I was pretty drawn to melodrama.

I start with the aim of making something instrumental, and then I'm just like, 'Agh, no, it's not interesting enough. I've got to say something here.'

I can't bring myself to release an instrumental album because I feel like I want some meat on the bone. Something to chew on, lyrically and content-wise.

I'm pretty open.

Profound thoughts and profound experiences get revealed to be tricks that we play on ourselves, and poetry gets revealed to be just, like, some dumb words that somebody put in an interesting order.

All the books on my shelves, when I would go to them to look for help with my anguish, they all just seemed so crass. They didn't get it. Those books don't understand. Nobody understands.

One thing I've heard that makes sense to me about grief is that there's this conception that it's a thing that you process, and then you're done processing it. But really it's not a thing that has an end, it's just what life is like now. You are living with this now, probably forever.