Josh Tillman

“My humor is my creativity, and my skepticism is a gift.”

“I made a decision as a child that I would never let anyone tell me that I was invalid or inauthentic, or that my experiences were.”

“People used to see things that disgusted them and say, 'I never want to see that again.' Now we've reached the point where we see things that are disturbing and revolting to us, but we want to see more and more of it.”

“I play sad bastard music. For the money.”

“Love is the substance of human survival.”

“Music is chaos. When I write songs, I'm opening the door to madness.”

“I would play my Dungeons and Dragons songs and watch people's eyes glaze over, and then I would start joking around between songs, and all of a sudden people were lighting up and engaging.”

“I was kind of bored playing drums in a band. Which was depressing, because playing in the band was kind of a golden ticket.”

“I'm not bamboozled by the fact that people are disgusted by me. I'm not my biggest fan either.”

“Funny is a good foil. Humor is illuminating, and it also gives you power.”

“If music was made by some kind of critical theorist, it would sound like my music.”

“I had this revelation, you are a lot better at the between-song stuff than you are at the song stuff. That was devastating. And I usually find devastating things to be pretty valuable.”

“Laurel Canyon is kind of grotesque. It's this nature-themed place, and everybody is kind of angry.”

“You know, there's an economy in lyric-writing that doesn't afford you, or at least me - I usually start off with nine or 10 verses and then boil it down to two or three that are half the length of the original verses.”

“You can choose to live in love or choose to live in fear.”

“What a crazy coincidence that the teaching of Christ sees to be so compatible with late-era capitalism, suburban isolation, rampant consumerism. And so I am not ever surprised when I see evangelicals contort themselves to justify supporting Donald Trump.”

“I try to make myself, and subsequently the audience, as uncomfortable as possible, whether it's completely desecrating a song they thought was one thing, or getting too drunk to really do a very good job.”

“I was asked to audition for the second season of 'Stranger Things.' I didn't want that level of exposure. I don't want to be TV famous.”

“My guiding principle when writing with other people is that it's not worth it to give someone a song unless it hurts for me to give them that song.”

“People who want to see things in stark dualities are not going to get much out of my music.”