Will Oldham

“Writing songs is a profession; so it's not an attempt to take things from my interactions with other people and for some reason give them to a total stranger to listen to. I find it offensive to hear other people do that.”

“I think everybody works from a defensive position, for the most part, in the film industry.”

“I don't think that word - the word pirate - has any real meaning. Or it's something that's had meaning imposed on it.”

“I like rural areas.”

“I have more respect for somebody who points at his ideal - in this case, the ideal of the pirate - and then becomes something that's more radical, more exciting, more subversive than a pirate could ever be.”

“It is more rewarding to be complicit with scarcity than excess.”

“As it turns out, as an adult I can have a very unpleasant, fierce and unforgiving temper at times. But I don't think I had that when I was a kid.”

“I do not want a personal relationship with my fans. Or to do anything that encourages them to think they have one with me. They can have a personal relationship with my songs. That's fine, but they don't know me.”

“Sometimes we need to tell ourselves that we're not going to do certain things, just in order to stay sane.”