Quotes By Will Oldham

What is normally called religion is what I would tend to call music - participating in music, listening to music, making records and singing.

As it turns out, as an adult I can have a very unpleasant, fierce and unforgiving temper at times. But I don't think I had that when I was a kid.

Sometimes we need to tell ourselves that we're not going to do certain things, just in order to stay sane.

It's nice to be able to backtrack and not be embarrassed by the music you used to listen to.

I don't think that word - the word pirate - has any real meaning. Or it's something that's had meaning imposed on it.

Too much emphasis is put on American roots music when people try and place me. You know, I grew up listening to punk.

I write a song to be recorded. And to some extent to be performed, but definitely more to be recorded than performed, because the recording will last longer than a performance.

I don't like going to cities. I don't mind maybe being in a city sometimes for a few hours, but I pretty much don't like cities. I don't even like passing through them.

Cities are made for enemies to destroy.

I need to go someplace faraway that doesn't have telephones and doesn't have a record player and doesn't have movie theaters and people walking down the street in order to not do anything.

I have more respect for somebody who points at his ideal - in this case, the ideal of the pirate - and then becomes something that's more radical, more exciting, more subversive than a pirate could ever be.

People are looking for fame or a focus, and I can't provide that.

There's very little admirable about being a pirate. There's very little functional about a pirate. There's very little real about a pirate.

I think everybody works from a defensive position, for the most part, in the film industry.

I think that what trips up a lot of great musicians is that they become involved with too many things that aren't where their strengths lie.

I make the songs and part of making them is singing them. But what you hear is not me. It's the song. It's through me.

It's O.K. to accept good fortune.

Whenever I see something that looks like it could be good - whether it's on vinyl, CD or cassette - if it's not too expensive, I'll take a chance.

I don't like the idea of being surrounded by hidden things; people you can't see in buildings and cars.

I like rural areas.

I think that America in general is piratical. Every time we accept a paycheck for doing almost nothing, allowing us to live above the poverty line, we're engaging in piracy.

Writing songs is a profession; so it's not an attempt to take things from my interactions with other people and for some reason give them to a total stranger to listen to. I find it offensive to hear other people do that.

I'd like my records to reach as many people as possible, but I'm also thinking in terms of how I can keep from getting jaded or unhappy with the process.

I do not want a personal relationship with my fans. Or to do anything that encourages them to think they have one with me. They can have a personal relationship with my songs. That's fine, but they don't know me.

When I was a kid, I always thought that acting was going to be the way to go.

I figure it's okay to make certain rules, whether or not people despise you for it at the time.

I think records and music are more appropriate and more respectful of the human soul than the churches are. And more respectful of the needs of humans to communicate with the aspects of themselves that are neglected by language.

It is more rewarding to be complicit with scarcity than excess.

I really hate press.