Devendra Banhart Quotes

Short fiction is the medium I love the most, because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision, the ability to say something as vividly as possible - but also the ability to create a narrative that, though lacking a novel's length, satisfies the reader.

As far as songwriting, my inspirations came from love, life and death, and viewing other people's situations.

So many of my songs are based on things that either happened to me or to someone I know, but there are also ones where I've written a made-up story. All of them are about very real emotions, and I just find different ways to express them.

The art of the three-minute song is more like journalism than writing a big 400-page book. You want to be brief, you want to make sense right yen and there. And sometimes that takes a bit of work.

I am a balladeer. People fall in love to ballads, and that is what makes the world go round.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

I've always been into writing love songs.

Sometimes I was in a mood to write a song as if I was writing in my journal and reveal certain parts of me that I was ready to reveal.

My favorite form is the short story. From an aesthetics stand point you really have to pare down to the bone. You can't write a throw-away scene.

Wait, I kinda do love you.

I'm not done writing songs about you yet.

In terms of love, you're not in control and I hate that feeling. I seem to write a lot of sad songs because I'm a very tragic person. But there's always an element of humour at the end.

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs.

Writing dialogue is like writing a song, which I've done.

Say you write a song about a chandelier, and the chandelier gives off light. And the light is the color red and red reminds you of the color your not supposed to wear around a bull. So you name the song 'Cow.'

I do write songs about love but I don't really know love that well.

I wonder why we always deny love. I remember in middle school, if you were accused of the crime of loving, you screamed denials constantly and stopped ever even looking at the boy you were accused of liking. The boys could destroy each other by yodeling, "An-drew lo-oves Jen-nie," and both Andrew and Jennie would flinch and blush. Love is this great thing that most songs and books and poems and lives are all about. So the minute we actually think there might be love around, we start laughing and pretending and hiding from it.

Writing a picture book is like writing 'War and Peace' in Haiku.

Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness and love.

For many years I wanted to be a rock star but of course that didn't work out. I did however write on napkins and pieces of paper sentences and occurrences. I decided maybe I should write a book because I had been writing so much. I'm actually writing a book based on The Room that will hopefully be published soon.

As a teenager I started painting and playing guitar...Music has been my playmate, my lover, and my crying towel...This song ("Until It's Time for You To Go") popped into my head while I was falling in love with someone I knew couldn't stay with me. The words are about honesty and freedom inside the heart.

You have to be a poet to know how to write a song with lyrics.

I'm used to writing songs and songs-I can fill em up with symbolism and metaphors. When you write a book (Chronicles, Vol. 1), you gotta tell the truth, and it can't be misinterpreted.

In a story, for example, you'll start off with a character who is a little bit of a cartoon. That's not satisfying and you start revising. And as you revise you always are making it better by being specific and by observing more closely, which actually is really the same as saying you love your characters. The close observation equals love of them.