Elliott Smith Quotes & Sayings

#1. There's lots of ways people can be dependent, on another person, or drugs ...

#2. I walked out and Jack Nicholson was sitting about six feet away, so I avoided that area and I looked up at the balcony in the back and sang the song.

Elliott Smith

#3. It was hard to sing like how I wanted to because playing live I had to just be at the top of my lungs all the time, and it made me sound like I had a really bad cold or something.

Elliott Smith

#4. Playing things too safe is the most popular way to fail,

Elliott Smith

#5. The devil's script sells you the heart of a blackbird.

Elliott Smith

#6. They say that God makes problems just to see what you can stand, before you do as the devil pleases.

Elliott Smith

#7. I wondered if I would talk about drug use. But I guess, why hide it?

Elliott Smith

#8. It's a lot easier to tell the truth usually.

Elliott Smith

#9. I can't think of anything off the top of my head that seems more important than something designed to raise money to keep something going that keeps IV drug users from dying.

Elliott Smith

#10. If I seem to be reckless with myself,It's the fault of no one.All things have a placeUnder the moon as well as the sun.

Elliott Smith

#11. It's just that a lot of songs that are popular right now, they don't have any meaning.

Elliott Smith

#12. What I used to be will pass away and then you'll see
That all I want now is happiness for you and me

Elliott Smith

#13. While his history of depression is compatible with suicide ... and the location and direction of the stab wounds are consistent with self-infliction, several aspects of the circumstances (as they are known at this time) are atypical of suicide and raise the possibility of homicide.

Elliott Smith

#14. Everything means nothing to me

Elliott Smith

#15. People are so ... seem so chaotic internally, but being filtered through some form, like making a record, sort of filters it down into something that can be understood.

Elliott Smith

#16. i'm never gonna know you now, but i'm gonna love you anyhow

Elliott Smith

#17. But I was also doing odd jobs around Portland, like spreading gravel and transplanting bamboo trees.

Elliott Smith

#18. A lot of people are kind of depressed. I'm happy some of the time, and some of the time I'm not.

Elliott Smith

#19. My girlfriend at the time convinced me to send these songs to Cavity Search. When they wanted to put out my record I was totally shocked.

Elliott Smith

#20. I didn't know how many people knew who Ferdinand was.

Elliott Smith

#21. I didn't have a hard time making it, I had a hard time letting it go.

Elliott Smith

#22. I actually don't think that I'm gonna sell a lot of records.

Elliott Smith

#23. I truly hope the future will bring me something to feel nostalgic about, because there's really nothing much so far I can remember fondly.

Elliott Smith

#24. It was kind of ridiculous to carry it up to a certain point and then drop the ball or the bomb, like quitting the band right after we had signed to Virgin.

Elliott Smith

#25. I don't really like New York better than Portland. It's just a different place.

Elliott Smith

#26. I think the music business will eventually crush me, but I [smiles] ... I'm ready.

Elliott Smith

#27. Theres a bunch of Elvis Costello records that made all the difference between feeling like a total freak and feeling like ... only a freak. A freak among other freaks

Elliott Smith

#28. Haven't laughed this hard in a long time. I better stop now before I start crying. Go off to sleep in the sunshine ... I don't want to see the day when its dying.

Elliott Smith

#29. You can take a picture of New York and one person looking at it will think it looks really depressing, frightening; and someone else will look at it and think of all the fun things you can do in New York. I think songs are kinda like that.

Elliott Smith

#30. There's always that argument to make - that you're in better company historically if people don't understand what you're doing.

Elliott Smith

#31. Because God only knows why people like what they like and don't like something else.

Elliott Smith

#32. I like home recordings and studio recordings just as much as each other - I don't think one is better - but for this record I wanted to see what I could do in a real studio with real producers.

Elliott Smith

#33. I was trying to do the same thing that I always do which is make an interesting record.

Elliott Smith

#34. Static in my head, the reflected sound of everything, tried to go to where it led, but it didn't lead to anything.

Elliott Smith

#35. I'm just writing songs about how I feel or about how people I know feel.

Elliott Smith

#36. I was coming off of a lot of psyche meds and other things.

Elliott Smith

#37. I'm happy some of the time, and some of the time I'm not. But like when I see a movie, for example, that I really like, that moves me or whatever, it's usually happy and sad at the same time.

Elliott Smith

#38. It's ok, it's alright, nothing's wrong
tell Mr. man with impossible plans to just leave me alone
in the place where I make no mistakes
in the place where I have what it takes

Elliott Smith

#39. I went walking around the city some more, people watching with a cold, blank stare. And I saw your face in everyone, I swear.

Elliott Smith

#40. Tired of dancing on a pot of gold flake paint

Elliott Smith

#41. Burning every bridge that I cross to find some beautiful place to get lost.

Elliott Smith

#42. Doing battle with themselves that way, every day, all the time and sometimes it sucks, but other times it results in people making sort of a dream comprehensible to someone else.

Elliott Smith

#43. I rode on a float in one of the parades in Mississippi. It's an experience.

Elliott Smith

#44. Music is worth doing just because. It doesn't have to be justified by some political point of view, and it's kind of insulting to the music to make it a tool for something else.

Elliott Smith

#45. If you play acoustic guitar you're the depressed, sensitive guy.

Elliott Smith

#46. He made his life a lie so he might never have to know anyone.

Elliott Smith

#47. I'm the wrong kind of person to be really big and famous.

Elliott Smith

#48. Nothing's gonna drag me down to a death that's not worth cheating.

Elliott Smith

#49. And I'm not trying to write heavy songs.

Elliott Smith

#50. People can be chaos but it's hard to fit it into some creative piece that you made. It's hard.

Elliott Smith

#51. Fights problems with bigger problems.

Elliott Smith

#52. I don't think it's important who I am. I really like playing music, but I don't really want to be anything in particular.

Elliott Smith

#53. I just wanted to move out of Portland to do something.

Elliott Smith

#54. All your secret wishes could right now be coming true.

Elliott Smith

#55. Well, I try not to think about the general public since I have no idea what the general public is and I don't think anybody does.

Elliott Smith

#56. It's hard to represent chaos, or like an absence of something. It's much easier to represent the presence of something or a situation.

Elliott Smith

#57. I don't really think of time off as writing blocks. I think that's a western notion of demonizing inactivity. When your imagination decides it needs to take a nap. maybe that's what it needs to do.

Elliott Smith

#58. I don't think that Dreamworks would have signed me expecting to really mess around with whatever it is I do.

Elliott Smith

#59. I watched myself put my paw in the bear trap on that one because there was this clause about leaving members.

Elliott Smith

#60. I think the suggestion that all my songs are personal is insulting because that assumes that I have a bunch of issues that I feel the need to unload on strangers. That is not the case. It also assumes that I just talk about myself the whole time which, again, is not true.

Elliott Smith

#61. There are lots of things I like about playing in a band, the things I can't do by myself you know.

Elliott Smith

#62. Why would you want any other, when you're a world within a world?

Elliott Smith

#63. People think they know all these things about other people, and if you ask them why they think they know that, it'd be hard for them to be convincing.

Elliott Smith