Author

My humor is my creativity, and my skepticism is a gift.

I've been writing a lot about my encounter with love. Which is the white stag as far as songwriting is concerned because love songs are so banal, and my experience with love is anything but that.

From J. Tillman

It's a vanity to think that a legitimate shamanistic experience can be purchased.

From J. Tillman

I try to make myself, and subsequently the audience, as uncomfortable as possible, whether it's completely desecrating a song they thought was one thing, or getting too drunk to really do a very good job.

From J. Tillman

Laurel Canyon is kind of grotesque. It's this nature-themed place, and everybody is kind of angry.

From J. Tillman

I would play my Dungeons and Dragons songs and watch people's eyes glaze over, and then I would start joking around between songs, and all of a sudden people were lighting up and engaging.

From J. Tillman

I had this revelation, you are a lot better at the between-song stuff than you are at the song stuff. That was devastating. And I usually find devastating things to be pretty valuable.

From J. Tillman

Funny is a good foil. Humor is illuminating, and it also gives you power.

From J. Tillman

My last album as J. Tillman, 'Singing Ax,' that was really a premeditated death rattle of the aesthetic precedent I had set. I realized I wasn't creating spontaneously; I was enforcing all these parameters. I was too self-loathing or something, and there was this obvious dissonance between my conversational voice and creative voice.

From J. Tillman

When I was young, I had this contrarian thing, and my music for a long time was an extension of that. I didn't want to entertain people; I had too much vanity to be an entertainer. I think that some layers of vanity came off.

From J. Tillman

J. Tillman

Notable Quotes

Authors with Similar Views

Kailash Kher

Mary Steenburgen

Michael Frome

Rod Stewart

Susannah McCorkle

Authors with Opposing Views

Alfred de Musset

Aron Ralston

Dave Mustaine

David Coverdale

FKA twigs