Paul Banks Quotes

#1. It's not like changing one word with my lyrics is going to make them more intelligible or relatable. I was always very misunderstood and taken as very pretentious and serious all the time. I would think, "Do you not see there's a lot of tongue-in-cheek and humor here?".

Paul Banks

#2. Sometimes you learn about the personality of your favorite artist, and you like their art a little less, because it doesn't jibe with what you had envisioned.

Paul Banks

#3. I didn't come in and say: "I'm a singer." I came into the band as a second guitar player and a vocalist, but not the songwriter. I had been writing poetry for years, so I sort of had the nature of the words. I felt like no one else could sing my lyrics, so I took a crack at it.

Paul Banks

#4. I perceive everything to be constantly subjective and strange. My version of truth in what I express, it feels like that opaque quality that you're talking about. It's just me being legitimate.

Paul Banks

#5. The idea of starting a band because of Nirvana and thereby trying to sound like Nirvana is totally not the case.

Paul Banks

#6. You were like a cloud, you were just like a flower, then you were a lime, now our love is sour.

Paul Banks

#7. That's for non-musicians to say: "I only listen to this or that type of music." I think musicians love all music, or at least that's my case.

Paul Banks

#8. If you're playing a one-minute game, I could squeeze in five to six games before anybody walked by my cubicle. So I got really good at blitz, one-minute chess games. But that's kind of like the cheap chess version.

Paul Banks

#9. I got the chess bug when I was finishing high school, we were doing chess tournaments at my house. I never got to a very high level.

Paul Banks

#10. It's an unmeetable level of writing. But even if it's something I feel like I can't ever attain, it doesn't crush my spirit. I figured out early on that you gotta find your own strengths and hone them rather than trying to emulate something that impresses you.

Paul Banks

#11. In an artistic and spiritual sense I'm really not that concerned about what happens after the album is done.

Paul Banks

#12. Everyone is broken-hearted except for the drastically unimaginative

Paul Banks

#13. My influences are vast and varied. I was into classic rock at the same time that I was into hip-hop. It was just that hip-hop was the first music that I got really really into. Rock was right on its tail.

Paul Banks

#14. If you're an artist, you do what you do, and in a way, you don't even control the core essence of what you do. You try to mold it and develop a style, but the core elements of what you do are just part of who you are.

Paul Banks

#15. I never wanted to start a band to sound like Nirvana.

Paul Banks

#16. Jeffrey Lewis sings as though absurdity were truth, and truth absurdity. And I think I agree with him.

Paul Banks

#17. I would have issues with directions songs were taking, but I never heard one of Carlos' [Dangler] basslines and said, "I don't like that, do something else." The same goes for the beat and the guitars. I think that's why we were able to make four albums together.

Paul Banks

#18. If time is my vessel, then learning to love might be my way back to sea

Paul Banks

#19. You can't just imitate and keep coming up with ideas. You have to be tapping into something that's pure and unconscious in yourself or you'll have no career.

Paul Banks