Alex Ebert Quotes

#1. It took me a long time to be alright with smiling onstage.

Alex Ebert

#2. Sometimes, I have to really monitor myself, but the only monitoring job I really do on myself on stage is, Is this truthful? Is this truthful? Is this truthful? Ideally, I send it in a flow of truth.

Alex Ebert

#3. For the better part of my life, I was always trying to manufacture somehow what I would consider 'living.' Because I grew up sort of upper-middle class and I didn't relate so much to that as a life, and I wanted to really find 'living.'

Alex Ebert

#4. Pro Tools was invented to quicken the recording process.

Alex Ebert

#5. What makes me deeply vulnerable? Probably the thing I suffer most from and have the most uncontrollable reactions from is still social anxiety.

Alex Ebert

#6. In a place like the Greek Theater in L.A., to try and create a close connection with the audience seems almost antithetical to the architecture of the building.

Alex Ebert

#7. Heath Ledger was supposed to put our album on what would have been a new record label. I still feel a little dead after losing him.

Alex Ebert

#8. What gets me pretty pissed off is the whole Monsanto engineered foods issue.

Alex Ebert

#9. There are many examples of great songs that become more famous when they are covered.

Alex Ebert

#10. Popular music usually has a chorus that needs to repeat, and people need to remember the song. That's sort of the major guideline when you're writing a song.

Alex Ebert

#11. When you're in pain, you're genuinely very, very alive, and that's beautiful. Especially emotional pain.

Alex Ebert

#12. I took a lot of long summer road trips with my dad, and the mix of music we listened to on the road skipped around from classical to Western to new age to hyper-cinematic.

Alex Ebert

#13. It's not that I want to necessarily avoid my darker moments, but I don't capitalize them and put a crown on them and tote them around as the answer anymore.

Alex Ebert

#14. To be lost is as legitimate a part of your process as being found.

Alex Ebert

#15. Sometimes I'm really communicating with the audience and I'm hyper-engaged. Other times my eyes are closed and I just let it be what it is.

Alex Ebert

#16. Physical pain is problematic because it's very difficult to transcend that. Sometimes you're just in physical pain, and that's a bummer. Even then, there are beautiful things involved in the healing of that. I've experienced some.

Alex Ebert

#17. I think the most important thing to remember is that pain passes. And artistically, the pain is going to pass. It's what you want to express out of the pain as opposed to indulging in the agony-and-pain mantra of songwriting that became such a hit in the '90s and still, all the way up to now.

Alex Ebert

#18. In my heart, I'm always in my rail-hosen.

Alex Ebert

#19. I get very heated about anything that is socially unkind.

Alex Ebert

#20. The goal is to be free and hopeful in the music. Because that's really the only intention you need. From there, every natural and powerful intention and feeling will, on its own, slide right out of you - out of your spirit.

Alex Ebert

#21. Even the most deft pen is a clumsy tool.

Alex Ebert

#22. I pay attention when the Academy Awards come around. I haven't watched them in a while, but I used to watch them religiously when I was a kid.

Alex Ebert

#23. Berlin would be a great place to have no cell phone, I think. Especially if you were able to live in a central location.

Alex Ebert

#24. Recording music is not really the healthiest thing for the body.

Alex Ebert

#25. It's so rare that I'll read or even watch an interview. I don't want to, either. I don't want to see other people's comments.

Alex Ebert

#26. The album is a thing that you can hang out with between shows. I think that it's really nice to give people something they can enjoy in a private situation or walking around, just as the soundtrack of their lives.

Alex Ebert

#27. I think Edward Sharpe's music is counter-cultural music in the strangest sense where you have a time now where love, optimism, hope and community are uncool and not part of the mainstream culture.

Alex Ebert

#28. I think that when you're open, you're at your most powerful.

Alex Ebert

#29. I don't want an angry song with no silver lining ending up on my album. Then I'd have to play, or feel obliged to play, that song every night in repetition as a mantra of anger.

Alex Ebert

#30. For me, it's very childish to tour on a train. And I think that's a powerful quality, to inspire childishness.

Alex Ebert

#31. I think fun is one of the best gifts we can give to each other. If everyone was having fun we'd be in good shape.

Alex Ebert

#32. Politics, poverty, riches, etc - these are but backdrops for the grand cinema, the opera: the glory of your life. Sure, change the backdrops, make them better, but it is this inside-ness that matters most. Nothing else, at the last breath, matters, but your very own poetry. The glory of living.

Alex Ebert

#33. My pain is usually caused by some sort of attack on my ego. So usually, pain is an indication of something that, eventually, I'm going to want to transcend. But sometimes pain is just pain that you sit through. I find it can have a really exhilarating effect.

Alex Ebert

#34. Hip hop was definitely, far and away, the primary influence for at least 10 years of my life. From about 7 or 8 on till about 15 or 16, that's all I listened to.

Alex Ebert

#35. I'm pretty freelance. A freelance meditator. I float from one thing to the other.

Alex Ebert

#36. When you're comfortable, you're not necessarily inclined to care about things that are contributing to your comfort. It's difficult.

Alex Ebert

#37. I try to give the music more of a campfire feel as opposed to a library atmosphere. I like when you can hear people hanging out in the songs and doing a little shuffling. It creates a feeling of participation.

Alex Ebert

#38. I've always been around musicians and always been the songwriter who doesn't end up playing the music.

Alex Ebert

#39. Unless you are in the willingness and ease and ecstasy of some kind of moment, you may end up the editor of your thoughts and of your expressions. I find I'm that way on stage.

Alex Ebert

#40. From about 5 years old on, I was very contemplative and started to become constantly filled with nostalgia for the present moment and the feeling that it's always fleeting.

Alex Ebert

#41. At its best, a live show is completely transcendent. The image I get is breaking through glass or shooting out into the free zone.

Alex Ebert