Justin vernon quotes

What a unique opportunity to be in town. I love townies. I value it, so to speak.

I just feel like why spend all my time doing something that makes me unhappy just to spend my time off thinking about how I have to go back to a job. It's such a vicious cycle that people get stuck in. But I'm also very lucky. I can't sit here too eagerly and say all that.

There's that whole thing that happens in relationships - you can love someone but, as soon as they stop loving you so unconditionally that they stop being themselves, it can be so dangerous.

I don't have like whatever, so I'm just like, "Oh man, I'm just going to try to stay out of most people's way and get a taco and enjoy myself as much as I can," because it's such a beautiful town. Beautiful weather. I called my dad that day to tell him what was going on with my passport and he was like, "Yeah it snowed four inches today. It's ten degrees outside." I'm just like, "Cool. I'm glad I'm in Austin, no matter what."

At once i knew i was not magnificent.

A lot of people change their band names because they're looking for a change of atmosphere.

People gather details and comparisons but it doesn't really bother me or land on me of any sort. I don't know if I was... Maybe I was influenced by them, maybe I wasn't, but I don't know. I was probably influenced by everything I've heard. So it doesn't bother me at all, but it doesn't sway me either.

You never have to change your scene because you're always comfortable with evolving.

As a fan of Kanye West, working with him is insane.

A lot of people are like, "How are you going to re-do it?" I'm not worried about what people are going to say because you know people are gonna be like, "It doesn't sound like this... It sounds like this." I'm just going to make music that I know I'm supposed to make.

I want to be able to write on my walls. I think that's the big thing.

Life sort of shrinks and you get older, I don't know if I'm going to have time to do all the things and be all the places as I want to be. Wisconsin's really sacred for me, so no matter what happens, where I end up permanently living, I'll be spending weeks and weeks at least of the year, no matter how many years I live, in the northwestern Wisconsin area.

I don't know why you'd spend any of your time trying to remake something that you don't actually like.

I think subconsciously or selfishly I knew that I was supposed to do something. It was like a thumping or a throbbing saying, "Yes, this what you've been waiting for." But you're a little dim to those spiritual thoughts when you're dumb like me. So I did have to get a little bit of a kick. I played it for a bunch of people and I think their reactions were warm and deep enough that they gave me the courage to get [the record] out there.

Our lives feel like these epochs, but really we are dust in the wind.

I'm super happy to see the record doing its thing and for people to like it, but for me, I had a great victory just as a person. I overstepped countless obstacles by creating that record. And the record's a metaphor for the personal steps I [took] throughout the past year.

I've been trying to catch up to it. Just trying to get with it, feel behind it a little bit, but that's good actually, probably. That way, I'm still sort of understanding it.

The whole point of being happy is not feeling like you have a job. I'm sure there are days where you're at your job and you're like, "Oh my god, this is hard."

With all the touring and distractions going on, I would get a sound together but I wouldn't have time to work on it. So I sat on the road with the sketches and saw how they revealed themselves emotionally.

When you write a song about a place, you are writing a song about a place that might be in a hundred years, or a place that has been, or that was - in your imagination. I think that also embodies the American spirit. You are looking for what you can call "a place."

I'm not trying to say something super complicated. I allow myself to say certain things that mean a lot to me.

I'm a pretty shy guy when it comes to girls and sex.

I don't find inspiration by just sitting down with a guitar anymore. I lost that. I started being so interested in other kinds of music.

I think that's all I want in life, just like peace and be able to make music and like have happiness when it's time off. Spend time with people and family, whatever.

Even though Wisconsin is the only place I want to be, there was a time when everything felt like it was imploding in my head. It was a whole lot of "me" and it was a little unbearable at times - borderline embarrassing, even. It didn't last long, though, and as soon as I got home everything flooded back. It all boils down to that common denominator of stillness and trying to self-discover - I guess it just feels good when I'm there.

I am generalizing, of course, but in hip-hop, it's like you get this shine for using the word "pussy" a billion times, and I think that that's weirdly healthier than not doing it at all - even though I really hope it ends soon because, you know, how many decades can we do that?

I won't forget those kind of things, but I just want to write them down and look at them. It's almost like when things like music come out and you're listening to a song and you have experiences with art or phenomena that supersede your simple relationship with them as just a piece of art. They're more than that. That's just what those quote are for me. They're big, they're important.

The weird thing is I feel like I'm shedding skin so fast and I'm growing and I'm becoming a new person so quickly at a rate that I'm comfortable with, yet it seems faster and more steady than an other time in my life except 16, 17, 18. I just have to sit down and listen to the ideas I'm having. And I'm not worried.

The amount of people that I feel like... I'm not being self-demeaning, but I actually feel like I'm not as cool as them, you know what I mean?

More and more into natural feelings rather than convoluted feelings or tastemaking or what have you. You always need critique, rock critics, but you can't take away people's taste. People are starting to, very slowly, do their own thing.

You’re in a relationship because you need help, but that's not necessarily why you should be in a relationship. And that's skinny. It doesn't have weight. Skinny love doesn't have a chance because it's not nourished.

If it wasn't for this person's privacy, I'd be able to talk pretty freely about this subject on a personal level. The record's about not her. It's about my struggles through years of dealing with the aftermath of lost love and longing and just mediocrity and just bad news, like life stuff. And in the [record], where the title comes from, the lyrics are actually a conversation between me and another girl, not this Emma character.

Licensing is how indie rock people make a living these days, so whatever about that. But I want good films and good placement for the songs because I want to be exclusive. I don't want to just sign it away because I don't want songs to lose meaning, but I'm also...I don't care [that] Wilco sold songs to Volkswagen. That's great. They probably drive Volkswagens.

I'm trying to be like, "Hey, dude, you're super happy, this is everything you've ever dreamed of - if you don't have somebody to hold hands with right now, everything's going to be OK, bro."

I just understand... I mean this may sound kind of bigheaded, bullheaded, or cumbersome, but when people say they've had a really deep experience with the record, like it caused a divorce or it like...I've gotten all these stories.

I love touring, I love making records, but eventually all I want...I want to score. I want people to ask me to score their film or use my songs in cinematic ways. I think the ultimate media is a story that you can watch and feel and have a musical moment to. I think it's my favorite. I love watching something when music is creating motion within the motion.

But in any situation with long love, I don’t think it ever goes away fully. You just sort of learn where to keep it.

I could be worried about it if I had the wrong attitude. I don't think that I want my life and my daily occurrences to influence the direction. I don't want my daily life or my happiness to be a direct influence on music or my sadness.

Moving is what the deal is. I wish I could spend more time in places, but I find I either want to be in a place for an afternoon or like 10 days or a month. I don't like the two-day thing, so I just wish the drives were shorter so you could wake up, take a walk, and spend three hours in one part of the town. I always thought there should be 28 or 30 hours in a day - you know what I mean?

Indie rock is just as susceptible - if not more susceptible - to all the gross things about people becoming total ass clowns in music, and only worrying about money and image. I'm not interested in being a part of that.

I don't want to get myself in trouble - and I don't think I'm super important or anything - but I think it's so funny that when you look at the business and the way that people make decisions in their lives, whether they're in art or music or they're in industry, they forget that being unique is the answer.

I don't want the big flashing lights and red carpet, like, "Here comes another Bon Iver album!" I just want it to be my bedroom-y thing. But that'll take a while to figure out.

I knew I could never give up on music. Completely devoid of any religious or iconic context, I felt like music was handed down to me - this is what I was going to do.

Real person. real name. I won't divulge too much, but it's not a fake name. And it's not a fake person. I guess that's the best answer I can say: It's not a fake name and it's not a fake person. But it's not her real name and it's not a real person either.

I'm catching up. I'm satisfied with the show. I think I want to get better and better and keep building. It took a while to figure out how to do it. I didn't know how it was gonna go. I was just like, "I better book a show and just see what happens."

I don't know, it's dorky. Just like quotes and stuff. Something I want to see everyday or something I want to be there. I don't know. I can put a hole in the wall if I want. It's mine. It's very simple. It's a very tiny house, but I can do whatever I want to. I can rip up the terrible vinyl floor and recycle it. Just create a good space. A quiet place to be.

I didn't grow up with indie rock - I mean, I listened to bands that are considered indie rock, but I think that term is dead and uninteresting.

And it's been a process of digging through the songs and trying to make them born on stage again. I think they are very different. I think they come off very differently. I think they come off, I don't know if it's masculine or outward, extroverted than introverted. I didn't know. It's just been a process.

I grew up with a good set of values, but it was never too strict. I was always encouraged to be a free-thinking individual.

I can't see myself - I'm not really looking so far ahead in the future. I know that I kind of need to live in the country even though I'm not - my house isn't in the country right now. I bought a house, like a really tiny, cheap house in Wisconsin.

I began realizing that it wasn't important for me to concern myself with the perception of truth.

I do think that our culture or our psyche as a country I guess, the world or whatever, we're due for a huge event. We're due for a little bit of a revolution or a spotlight or a movement. Something that feels large, something that feels like the 60s. Some sort of unification.

I think if you feel weird and self-conscious about that kind of stuff - which happened to me at some points - that means your ego is really kicking in. You can understand how people get to be assholes in music business because it's like you're getting pumped full of your own thing so much, you get ungrounded. That's a dangerous place to be.

No matter how much you care about a person, you have to be able to know that you can sit down at night and be happy with who you are without that person. That's really hard when you're a lonely emo kid.

Irony is based on insecurity; people like to not like things because they don't understand them.

I'm trying to think about stuff like that: How can a show not be just a whining guy with a guitar.

If I completely understood what was going on and I understood these songs, they wouldn't make sense to play live anymore. They're still enigmatic for me. I'm still searching in the songs as they are. That's what's actually been the most fun about playing and touring for me is that there's still a lot of caverns in the songs where you can go and hide out different nights.

Hopefully, most days, you're like, "This is sweet. I wake up and do the things that I do and I'm usually smiling." That's how my dad is with his job.

Even the indie rock world - which is supposed to be about truth and independence from corporate mindfulness or something - is totally subject to the paraphernalia of celebrity.

It was all the things I wanted my music to be, but yet it wasn't grand and it wasn't obtuse - it wasn't overshooting, it wasn't undershooting, it was precise. The lyrics and the way that I was able to extract and excavate emotion within me.

I've stolen music before, I don't know anyone who hasn't. But if you're gonna do that, I want you to be able to have an opportunity to know the real lyrics because I really hate it when people put up wrong lyrics online.

The easiest thing to feel is sadness.

I'd have to think about it, but I was listening to this Johnny Cash song today that Tom Waits wrote for him - I think that's the story. For some reason it's a thing that sticks in my brain. He's describing this scene where he sees all these almost biblical images happening kind of in this burrow where this biblical train runs through this yard.

I'm not with anybody, I don't have time for dating. Not to get too personal, but it's weirdly harder to meet new people now. But for the first time in my life since I was a little kid, I'm not so concerned about it.

It's dangerous when music gets cornered by anything.

I feel like this thing [that] we're rocking back and forth like we're stuck in a snow bank and we all sort of know it. I feel like people are getting less and less pretentious and less and less hip - hopefully.

Every band sells t-shirts and plays certain auditoriums, but I'm sick of being like everyone else, because I'm not.

What happens between people is so misunderstood even between the people who are having the sex.

Oftentimes I’ll just overflow, and then I’ll need to spend a week alone and not talk to anybody or call anybody.

We just met for the first time and David Byrne was like, "Hey, you want to sing on this song?" and I was like, "Yes, I do want to sing on that song." He's the most legendary dude but I wasn't thinking about how he was a legend when rehearsing. I was just thinking, "Wow, this guy really knows what he wants in his music." And that ended up being the vibe, like "Oh, you wanna try that?" "Yeah, that sounds great!"

I'm up in the woods, I'm down on my mind. I'm building a still, to slow down the time.

The reality is, if you're friends with somebody you should be able to be honest with them, and that honesty should be the biggest magnet to truth.

You never have to be scared to look to the future for opportunity.

You should be able to have happiness. If you don't have that, then you're not really bringing your whole self to the relationship.

Apple is not thinking different anymore, they are getting worse by the day. They've become bottom-dollar and you can see that transition easily.

It makes sense that that's part of the story and everything, but that's part of any story of any record - where was it record and how long and what were the people doing. I think people want to know where these events are made. That's why I like the word "record."

My favorite idea is doing an all-night tent show starring my friend's band Marijuana Deathsquads, where everyone would wear super-loud headphones, and there would be tons of subs and lights. It'd be really dope.

I think I've always been aware of it with my music. I think growing up basically and having a lot to deal with and just slowing down and having something to say and something to retract from, I think I just knew that what I was doing was extremely honest.

We got in after a ten hour drive after sleeping for four hours. I'm not complaining here. I'm really not complaining. Ten hour drive to get here, we unload, we sound check, we get here we take photos, we do this. I haven't eaten anything today. It's like... And I'm not even hungry.

There are decent people that I know who don't know how to treat their partner. It's been built up so hard and so high that people are afraid.

There were a bunch of moments that kept cascading. Like, when we got an opportunity to play "Letterman", it gave us an opportunity to step up. It feels good to shed that skin and rise out of it.

I told myself I never wanted to rent again. Even though it's a battle, I'm lucky cause I'm living in a cheaper part of the country. I just told myself I'm never going to do this again. I'm never gonna work, I'm never going to pay somebody rent again. I'm never going to sign another lease at least.

I don't feel anything about it. I really like "Staring at the Sun" - I like that song a lot. I haven't heard a lot of their records, but I know that they're cool. I know that the people who listen to them are really awesome and I like those people, so I know that I would like the band, I just don't own their records.

The songs started as a soundscapes, and then came the words and music; each song took at least a year to make.

Some songs, some nights won't do anything for you, but people enjoy them and that's the job. The magic is finding those places to stand in the song and gain perspective.