Colin Meloy Quotes

#1. We are the inheritors of a wonderful world, a beautiful world, full of life and mystery, goodness and pain. But likewise are we the children of an indifferent universe. We break our own hearts imposing our moral order on what is, by nature, a wide web of chaos.

Colin Meloy

#2. I wish I had a better range, but I really have a super-limited one. Barely a tenor, dips into baritone - that's about it.

Colin Meloy

#3. As she walked, she breathed a quick benediction to the patron saint of sleuthing. "Nancy Drew," she whispered, "be with me now.

Colin Meloy

#4. Music has been already devalued by the consumer. There's an expectation that it should be free so the race to the bottom has already been won.

Colin Meloy

#5. Living in war, and being a wartime band, I don't think there's any way that can't somehow influence the songwriting.

Colin Meloy

#6. Was there ever any doubt?
And as the spotlights fade away,
And you're escorted through the foyer,
You will resume your callow ways,
But I was meant for the stage.

Colin Meloy

#7. My brother was kidnapped by birds. My friend was captured by coyotes. And I nearly forgot: My bike is broken. Sounds like a country song. If country songs were really, really weird.

Colin Meloy

#8. Pop music has always adopted the style of marrying upbeat melodies to dour lyrics.

Colin Meloy

#9. I have a conflicted relationship with musicals, because I think the music itself can be so horrendous. It's an industry that relies on appealing to a mainstream culture in order to survive.

Colin Meloy

#10. If Broadway musicals were as popular as they were in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, then people like Sufjan Stevens and Iron & Wine would be writing for Broadway, which would be amazing. As it stands, it's the worst stuff that's mired in pop music.

Colin Meloy

#11. The jam stuff doesn't appeal to me in general. My newfound love for the Dead came from Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia's songwriting, not the elaborate guitar solos. I'm a song person. Once it starts to break out of that structure and become loopy, it's uninteresting to me.

Colin Meloy

#12. When you get respect from the people who are buying your music and coming to your shows, there's an expectation that you have to live up to your own standards.

Colin Meloy

#13. This was all in the making, a long time ago. You had as much control over these events as a leaf does in the time of its falling.

Colin Meloy

#14. I like all sorts of things, not necessarily just Victorian. Even though I tend to read a lot of Victorian novels, I like a lot of contemporary stuff.

Colin Meloy

#15. But, there's like a hole world out there! Filled with mystery and awe and sorrow and happiness.

Colin Meloy

#16. My mother was a Chinese trapeze artist in pre-war Paris Smuggling bombs for the underground. And she met my father at a fete in Aix-en-Provence; He was disguised as a Russian cadet in the employ of the Axis.

Colin Meloy

#17. single car waited helplessly at a dormant traffic light;

Colin Meloy

#18. It was a nice relief to be able to work on individual songs.

Colin Meloy

#19. When I first started writing these kind of songs that would eventually become Decemberists songs, I was writing them because I knew that nobody was listening at the time and that it wouldn't hurt to challenge myself and get weirder and see if I could alienate more people

Colin Meloy

#20. She quickly exited the room, hearing the echoes of the mastiff's angered barks fade behind her down the hallway. As she walked, she breathed a quick benediction to the patron saint of sleuthing. "Nancy Drew," she whispered, "be with me now." At

Colin Meloy

#21. I think the music should definitely underscore the sentiment of the song, and it can work for or against it.

Colin Meloy

#22. I was in school for literature, and read so many 19th century and early 20th century novels that it was hard to break out of that and read an average Jeanette Winterson book or something.

Colin Meloy

#23. You can't really come into a concept record objectively, because you immediately associate it with Yes, stuff from the 1970s that punk rock kicked against, the pretentiousness.

Colin Meloy

#24. An old bandit adage: A bell is a cup until it is struck.

Colin Meloy

#25. One thing about hanging out with a baby is that you can remember a little bit better what it was like to be a kid, and all the mystery that came along with it.

Colin Meloy

#26. I pretty much draw the line when people want you to do original music for commercials.

Colin Meloy

#27. Alexandra held out her arms; her son stepped into them and laid his his head, softly, on his mother's chest.

Colin Meloy

#28. Meditation. That's the key. Supposedly. Calming your mind ind total silence. Understanding your connection to the natural world and all that. You do that, and you can hear it. All the talking.

Colin Meloy

#29. I don't feel like we're setting ourselves up to be exclusive. I don't want to set up an attitude where we're telling people 'You can't listen to our music if you don't have a college degree.

Colin Meloy

#30. Sometimes, when the world is falling apart around you, all that's left to do is dance, right?

Colin Meloy

#31. My dear Prue, we are the inheritors of a wonderful world, a beautiful world, full of life and mystery, goodness and pain. But likewise are we children of an indifferent universe. We break our own hearts imposing our moral order on what is, by nature, a wide web of chaos. It is a hopeless task.

Colin Meloy

#32. Two men, one fairly dragging the other along, suddenly entered the clearing and, their eyes trained behind them, ran headlong into the owl's creation and knocked it, every maple branch and every twig of dogwood, to the ground in a splintering crash. The owl fell backward, devastated.

Colin Meloy

#33. And I am a writer, writer of fictions
I am the heart that you call home
And I've written pages upon pages
Trying to rid you from my bones ...

Colin Meloy

#34. There's some things there that you just have to draw the line. Some people are just not going to like it. We would hope that everybody would like it.

Colin Meloy

#35. It's hard for us to talk about how we disdain file-sharing when in fact it probably has been a great resource for us.

Colin Meloy

#36. It is better to live presently. By living thus, perhaps we can learn to understand the nature of this fragile coexistence we share with the world around us.

Colin Meloy

#37. No-one wants to hear anything spoken in earnest anymore, unless it happens to involve unrequited, teenage love.

Colin Meloy

#38. When everybody is playing at the same level, there's so much more noise. And there's less incentive for the people who should be rising above that noise to take time and invest in what they're doing. It just becomes about hustling and grabbing attention.

Colin Meloy