"Playing things too safe is the most popular way to fail."
"I've been doing four-track songs by myself since I was like a teenager, where I'd sing in a way that I ... I just didn't think other people would like it, so I didn't play it for them but eventually I got over that, which I'm happy that I did, because it's kind of a drag to be playing a kind of music that you don't really like as much as another kind."
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Source: Prozac Nation. Book by Elizabeth Wurtzel, 1994.
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More quotes by Elliott Smith
"I don't really like New York better than Portland. It's just a different place."
"But I was also doing odd jobs around Portland, like spreading gravel and transplanting bamboo trees."
"I got tired of doing battle with people thinking I was a little weird because I wasn't in a band making happy, stilted music. The only people who really seem weird to me are people who think they're normal. People who think it's possible to be normal just by doing the same things that most people do. Is there a most people? I don't know. Television makes it seem like there is, but I think that might just be television."
"Theres a bunch of Elvis Costello records that made all the difference between feeling like a total freak and feeling like ... only a freak. A freak among other freaks"
"I didn't have a hard time making it. I had a hard time letting it go."