"I'm always making a conscious effort to be viable and accessible."
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Quote collection
Richard Thompson quotes (page 2 of 3)
46 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"It's fun to sing sad songs. And it's fun to listen to sad songs. Enjoyable. Satisfying. Something."
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"There is in fact a controversy over Darwin's theory. Clearly both theories have religious implications. But this is not about God."
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"I try to make songs visual and tactile to kind of put you into the action."
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"But music can save your life sometimes. It probably saved me from working in a bank or something. That's a kind of salvation right there."
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"I try to look for the good in everybody, regardless of the way they're labeled."
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"Well, first of all it's entertainment. That stops us becoming too pretentious or thinking we're great artists."
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"There are only three white blues singers -- Geoff Muldaur is at least two of them."
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"They came in the thousands from the whole human race to pay their respects at his last resting place."
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"I want people to come to my music without prejudice. I want them to get the music first. And who I am isn't that important. If they like the songs to me that's a good thing."
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"It's amazing what some people read into songs."
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"Nothing is plainer than that, if the principles of the church of Rome prevail here, our Constitution would fall. The two cannot exist together. They are in open and direct antagonism with the fundamental theory of our government and of all popular government everywhere."
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"To see both sides of a quarrel, is to judge without hate or alarm"
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"I just like to entertain myself by sitting down and writing songs."
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"Sitting around home I mostly play acoustic. I've got seven or eight guitars of various sorts, including a baritone. Sometimes at home, because a guitar is just lying around, that's the guitar I pick up rather than actually choosing something. I try to plan ahead for my laziness by leaving interesting things scattered about. If I leave a baritone guitar lying around, that's the one I'll pick up, and I'll start writing baritoney things."
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"I think there are shades of political songs; some are more subtle and can be more effective for being subtle, for being more metaphorical. I've written a lot of songs like that, where it's not really clear if it's a war song or a relationship song. The metaphor can be the most powerful thing of all, but sometimes you have to speak more clearly to more people, and I think this is one of those times."
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"If you're up there performing a song for the first time, it's as if you're hearing it through their ears. You become acutely self-conscious of the song in performance, so that's a good thing before recording. But I like to have some surprises for the audience; I don't want the audience to know everything that's going to be on the record, because these days, with the Internet, people become avid collectors of pre-knowledge."
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"An audience will let you know if a song communicates. If you see them kind of falling asleep during the song, or if they clap at the end of a song, then they're telling you something about the song. But you can have a good song that doesn't communicate. Perhaps that isn't a song that you can sing to people; perhaps that's a song that you sing to yourself. And some songs are maybe for a small audience, and some songs are for a wide audience. But the audience will let you know pretty quickly."
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"I'm sure every pattern has been covered, but it's nice to think you might dwell on some that other people don't."
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"The good part of writing is where it gets out of your control and turns into something else. You look at it and think "Whoa, where did that come from? That wasn't what I meant to write, but it's more interesting than what I was intending. Which part of my subconscious or my experience did that come from?" Often the answer isn't clear, and often the line between fiction and fact isn't clear, either."
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