Beck

“It's really hard for me to commit, one way or the other. I was just always creating and seeing what came out.”

“I think you have to keep a childlike quality to play music or make a record.”

“There's 40 or 50 songs that nobody's heard that I've done in between albums. There's a whole evolution from Midnite Vultures to Sea Change that's never been released.”

“In the past it seemed like I was making fun of rap a little bit. But it was more me making fun of myself, since I'm not technically a rapper, whatever that means.”

“I hear a lot of bad TV commercials that try to sound like Where It's At. That pretty much turned me off from using the electric piano for a lot of years.”

“I love British humor. It's just so - surreal.”

“I have heard some stuff that might be influenced by my records, but it's usually pretty wacky and off-the-wall, which is kind of annoying, to be frank.”

“I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.”

“I think trying to be offbeat is the most boring thing possible.”

“I did that Grammys thing - I did a little freeform poem.”

“I had long hair when I was a teenager.”

“Most of my early records were not cohesive at all, just collections of demos recorded in different years. 'Odelay' was the first time I actually got to go in the studio and record a piece of music in a continuous linear fashion, although that was written over a year.”

“You can't meditate on walking or certain human habits. You concentrate too much on the way you walk, and you'll start walking pretty weird.”

“I think my whole generation's mission is to kill the cliche.”

“Some need diamonds some need loveSome need cards some need luckSome need dollar bills lining their clothesall I need is, all I need is two white horses in a line”

“I'm a musician. I'm not, like, a personality. I've never really pretended to perform that kind of function.”

“Especially in music, you wonder, Okay, should I still be doing this? Like, are you overstaying your welcome at the party? But I don't know.”

“I can't tell you how many things I've worked on where I sat on it for a few years, and then somebody else did something very similar. Whether it's some weird vocal effect you hear on another record, or a drum beat, or even a song title, a subject matter, or a mixture of different kinds of music.”

“You have to shelve a lot of your inspiration. There's only so much you can do with one record.”

“I've never been able to relate to apathy. I've always been doing stuff, been in action, making music or working just to get by.”