Ben Folds Quotes (23 Quotes)

I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you

It's not safe, but yeah, I can flip a piano over. You take it on this side where there's not really as much weight.

I start songs all the time. If I weren't so lazy, I would finish them. It's like when I have a deadline I have to. I always feel very lucky that I am forced to make records at certain times. If I was forced to make 2 records a year, I would write twice as many songs. I can't make myself finish something unless I am forced.

The other reason Rufus and I are great together is that we're both really lazy. The rehearsing, the sound checks -- he's actually worse than I am, and that's something. To get us to do anything other than sit in our dressing rooms is a challenge. Who knows what will happen

I don't leave my neighborhood. I don't go anywhere. There are four blocks I live in and there are two coffee shops, one at each end of the block... so I don't do much driving... Some people would say they never see me because I don't go anywhere. I stay in the blue state of Nashville, in my bubble.

White people don't sing together very often, and when they do, it's about the celebrity of the song. The singing at my shows is all about harmony.

Everything I write is personal, really. Even when I'm sarcastic, it's quite personal. And on this record, from the production to the singing to the performances, I got it really honest. To the modern ear, it seems soft. When you hear it against other things, it seems vulnerable. Lyrically and musically, though, this is more subtle. And, yes, it's asking a lot of someone who's used to being hit over the head with bright neon to listen to this.

Was I gung-ho about changing society when I was 18 I don't know about that. When you're 18, you're really into yourself and what's happening to your body. But I definitely had some ideas. This malaise is not confined to America either. I spotted that same attitude in kids in Eastern Europe before the fall of communism.

I used to do this big rant at the end of some gigs with Ben Folds Five. The band broke into this big heavy metal thing and I started as a joke to scream in a heavy metal falsetto. I found myself saying things like: Feel my pain, I am white, feel my pain.

It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.

The clock never stops, never stops, never waits. We're growing old. It's getting late.

The main thing is that we performed the songs, then went to the speakers - if we liked it, we kept it if we didn't, then we did it again. That seems like the most obvious way to record, but it really isn't the way we make records in this day and age. This is just very old-fashioned.

I'm older than I was, and I'm still washed-up, and I haven't changed my music one iota. It's just much easier to do this when people are being nice to you.

Now that I have found someone, I'm feeling more alone... than I ever have before.

Everybody knows it hurts to grow up... and we're still fighting it.

I was pretty much a dork growing up. Going up in front of a crowd and being an idiot was a relief when I was a kid. But talking to two or three people at once and being myself was impossible. And being myself while singing a song was more than impossible I would've rather died. I get really nervous and tend to want to be an idiot.

I had to play a George Harrison song at a benefit a couple nights ago, and it was really hard for me. Obviously it wasn't my world.

Rock and roll is - and should be - a kid's place.

The piano is just a different animal. It's expensive, it's big, it's heavy, and it doesn't fit in the mix easily. Everyone grew up with a piano in their living room, so rocking out on the piano was accessible - it wasn't an upper-class thing. Now pianos have become very much a piece of furniture.

People rush around in the summer to try and find like-minded musicians to put together. Packages are all the rage. I prefer keeping it smaller, having a tour that's manageable -- both for me and the audience -- and Rufus and I go together in certain ways. We're both out of step with any kind of music scene. We don't really fit in anywhere. I think we feel similarly disenfranchised -- in a good way. Also, I can listen to Rufus every night. That's important.

Next door, there's an old man who lived to his nineties and one day passed away in his sleep. And his wife, she stayed for a couple of days and passed away. I'm sorry, I know that's a strange way to tell you that I know we belong.

You never know when you put out an album that's unique whether it'll get beat up for it or not.

A lot of 18-year-olds are like old men. They think they've seen everything.