black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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…

Ben Folds

Off the coast and I’m headed nowhere
BEN FOLDS

Coast Headed Nowhere
The nature of honesty is that if someone has information or knows something about you that you don’t want heard, then they have power over you.
BEN FOLDS

Honesty Over Want You
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.
BEN FOLDS

Song Writing Years
I drink a lot, probably too much. My scene while writing lyrics is always a bottle of scotch and stacks of note cards, pencil and pencil sharpener. I throw around note cards and drink.
BEN FOLDS

Cards Scotch Writing
The press is like any business. Its a group of really intelligent individuals that ends up being one slathering, one-eyed, drooling monster.
BEN FOLDS

Group Intelligent Monster
You can’t really control how people hear stuff. It’s hard to remember that. I have to let go of it.
BEN FOLDS

Letting People Stuff
I’m aware that I’m very fringe, and it’s nice that way.
BEN FOLDS

Fringe Nice Way
In many ways, I’ve chosen to be plain, almost too plain, too self-effacing. Like, if I record a vocal and I don’t like the way it sounds, I would have them turn it up and take the reverb off it to make it as plain as possible.
BEN FOLDS

Records Self Sound
I want people to listen to my lyrics and be okay with themselves. The people who have it the roughest are homosexuals who come out of the closet.
BEN FOLDS

Closets People Want
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.
BEN FOLDS

Gigs Pain White
Notes don’t make music until you learn to insert silence between them.
BEN FOLDS

Notes Silence
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.
BEN FOLDS

Easier Nice People
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.
BEN FOLDS

Ask Lyrically Modest Somehow Vulnerable
My parents told me I must get married. I was seen as a failure if I didn’t do it.
BEN FOLDS

Failure Married Parent
I think alcohol is a good drug for me when I’m writing. I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem with it. I can stop for a few weeks, so I think it’s okay. I don’t think it’s good for my liver, but I do love it. It’s a huge part of my life, and it makes me happy.
BEN FOLDS

Alcohol Thinking Writing
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.
BEN FOLDS

Every Furniture One Piano Room The Piece
The clock never stops, never stops, never waits. We’re growing old. It’s getting late.
BEN FOLDS

Growing Reality Waiting
Everyone, when you’re a teenager and you’re growing up, you do feel like your life is dramatic enough to be on a TV screen, but we know that it’s not.
BEN FOLDS

Enough Grow Up Screen Teenager
I look to an out gay man or woman as pretty much what I would aspire to. The strength that it takes to do that and the floodgates that open and what they pay for it.
BEN FOLDS

Gay Looks Men
Billy Joel and Joe Jackson were both great, and they both play piano.
BEN FOLDS

Both Piano Play
I’m romantically inclined. No human being on Earth is not attracted to other people. There is no fairy tale that they only have eyes for you. You just choose to act on it or not.
BEN FOLDS

Earth Eyes People
Now that I have found someone, I’m feeling more alone… than I ever have before.
BEN FOLDS

Feelings Found Someone
The way I see it, there’s only one melody for any song.
BEN FOLDS

Gravity Song Way
People learn at the rate they are going to learn.
BEN FOLDS

Learn People Rate
I feel like a quote out of context, withholding the rest so I can be for you what you want to see.
BEN FOLDS

Feels Want Withholding
And all I really want to say is you’re the reason I want to stay.
BEN FOLDS

Happy Love Reason Want
The nice thing about age is worrying less and less about what people think.
BEN FOLDS

Nice People Thinking

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…

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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…

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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