Justin Vernon Quotes

The smallest detail can contribute to the whole, I think particularly with emotion, you want it to be as authentic as it can, whether its a artifact or a theatrical event. But the whole is the sum of so many images.

I have often heard the statement made by foreign singers, as a demonstrated fact, that the German artists are artists in feeling indeed, and serious in their devotion, but that their singing is crude.

If I'm not crying while writing a song, I'm not doing it right.

There are contemporary artists that I hate with all my heart. These are provocateurs that are without feeling. Where is the real emotion?

The main thing for all of us was having a ballad, a slower song. Finally, they get to hear more of a vulnerable side to us! We didn't really have that in 'Reflection,' and that's something we all fought for.

I believe that Judy Garland's artistry was so fine. I mean, when people say: 'oh, she brought so much of her life to her music', I don't really believe that. I believe that she didn't have to. She just was a moving human being. That was her gift.

If we deny emotion, we lose all touch with our internal universe.

Crying's always been a way for me to get things out which are buried deep, deep down. When I sing, I often cry. Crying is feeling, and feeling is being human.

I don't deal in technique. I deal in emotions.

As a writer, as a storyteller, you have to have your emotions close, and the older I've gotten, the less I've worried about not displaying emotions.

If you're doing your job properly, you take the risk of feeling slightly foolish and delve in and bring out the emotions.

I think blues music is music of the soul. Of course, there are other forms. You could call some classical music blues music in that way.

Music is truly love itself, the purest, most ethereal language of the emotions, embodying all their changing colors in every variety of shading and nuance.

I think the more emotional you are, the better. I'm sort of writing [songs] as I go and I can never tell how it's going to be or how it's going to feel until I get into the studio. But I definitely think it will. I probably can't help but have the emotions in my voice.

Music gets us in touch with our emotions in a way that's more intimate than any other art form.

Obviously, the emotions I want to convey through music are streamed through the way I interpret life.

Being singer is different than being an actor, where you call up sources from your own experience that you can apply to whatever Shakespeare drama you're in. But an actor is pretending to be somebody, a singer isn't. And that's the difference. Singers today have to sing songs where there's very little emotion involved. That and the fact that they have to sing hit records from years gone by doesn't leave a lot of room for any kind of intelligent creativity.

The Strat covers the complete spectrum of human emotion .. the tremolo enables you to do anything - you can hit any note known to mankind

I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

There's definitely some pieces in there that reflect on my personal life, but really, they aren't as personal as everybody thinks they are. I would like them to be more personal. The emotions, the songs themselves are personal. I can't do it - I've tried to write personally and it just doesn't seem to work. It would be too obvious. Some things that you could read in could fit into anyone's life that had any amount of pain at all. It's pretty cliche'.

emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. in the middle they are acted. this is why all the world is a stage.

I just sing what I'm feeling at the time and hope my fans will like that and appreciate that.

As actors, emotion is the sand in the sandbox for us. Without emotion, there's nothing to play - and we are playing. We know that. Whether you think we do or not, we know that.

I love to make music that makes people feel mood-enhancing, life-affirming brilliance but I just make whatever comes out at the time and sometimes it's up and sometimes it down and sometimes it sideways with a hint of s smile.

Henceforth I would have to cosent to combine two voices: the voice of banality (to say what everyone sees and knows) and the voice of singularity (to replenish such banality with all the élan of an emotion which belonged only to myself).