Ben Gibbard Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• I want to write songs with complete sentences. I almos have this obsession with short-changing words. I would never be so pretentious to say that my lyrics are poetry. ... Poems are poems. Song lyrics are for songs.

  Ben Gibbard

  Song, Writing, Want

• More times than not, it's a failed endeavor. You will fail more times than you succeed. But I think you need those failed endeavors.

  Ben Gibbard

  Writing, Thinking, Needs

• For me, a song doesn't really take flight until it has a lyric on it. ...Without a lyric that I'm happy with, it could be the greatest song ever melodically or arrangement-wise, but it doesn't have any resonance.

  Ben Gibbard

  Wise, Song, Writing

• If there is one thing I think I have accomplished, it's that I always thought of myself as a very literal songwriter, and as I look at some of those older records, I don't hear it now the way I did when I was 20. I think it is undeniable that the songs have become more instantaneously descriptive and literal. I'd like the songs to be more storytelling, but also have the turns of phrase within them that would hopefully distance my writing from the pack. I feel like on those older records there are a lot of attempts at clever turns of phrase.

  Ben Gibbard

  Song, Clever, Distance

  Source: www.avclub.com

• As a songwriter, I'm not necessarily writing about myself or my life.

  Ben Gibbard

  Writing, Songwriters

• I like writing on piano and a computer, and a lot of 'Plans' came out of samples and vocal lines.

  Ben Gibbard

  Writing, Piano, Lines

• You spend hours alone, only with your thoughts, and you torture yourself. It's a tendency of many writers to temper the self-destructive act of writing with other self-destructive acts. I certainly was one of those people for a long time.

  Ben Gibbard

  Writing, Self, Long

• If you tell certain people that you like Kerouac, they assume that's all you read, like you don't know anything else about literature. I recognize all the things that people dislike about the way he writes - his tone and the sentimentality of it all. But those books were there for me at a very important point in my life.

  Ben Gibbard

  Book, Writing, People

  "The Meaning of Life" by Ben Gibbard, www.pastemagazine.com. April 10, 2008.

• I take things a little bit more critically now, like, "What did I think I was saying in that song? What is this song about?" I thought the lyrics were incredibly descriptive, and now they sound really cryptic and weird. I'd like to also think that when I listen to songs from Something About Airplanes that I'm proud of my development as a writer. I don't think I was doing anything poorly at that time, but I can certainly see how my writing has changed.

  Ben Gibbard

  Song, Writing, Airplane

  Source: www.avclub.com

• When I listen to Airplanes record, it takes me back. I remember a lot of my thought processes when I was 20 or 21, writing those songs and recording that record. I wonder what I was thinking when I was trying to say a particular thing. I hear some of the weird little nuances in the recording; I can hear what the room sounded like. I remember what it smelled like. I can remember sitting up in guitarist Chris Walla's bedroom and for the first time in my life having this realization like, "Maybe I can do this. Maybe I can make music that in some capacity people will enjoy and come see me play."

  Ben Gibbard

  Song, Writing, Airplane

  Source: www.avclub.com

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