Alex Ebert Quotations

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The main thing that I've learned, artistically, is that if I'm in pain and feeling the budding of anger - if I absolutely feel like I need to write a song about it, I'll either need to transform that anger into something positive, or I'll just need to throw the song away. Because eventually, I'm going to want to transcend that pain and that anger.

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.

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

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.

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.

To me, what I define as defiance, in some ways, is knowing the "reality" and having the ability to possess a realist mindstate yet still working towards the fantasy and still being childish. While still having the understanding and capacity that would generally inspire pessimism: some sort of more realist perspective that I think most people classify as adult. Anything like that and anything that's sort of fun.

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

I get very heated about anything that is socially unkind.

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

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

I'm really into the basic idea of Kriya Yoga. The breathing that goes on in Kriya. Other than that, it's just communicating with the universe and getting the inspiration for different kinds of breath. Basically, I'm into the movement of breath and the shapes of breath. The different kinds of sequences of breath. I like doing that a lot.

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

I'm the most passionate about pushing the realization that there's the joy of love and kindness and sharing, all of these basic qualities, on people who are suffering from adulthood. By these people, I mean, I really feel bad. I think that in their sadness, they're destroying the world. The way that they're destroying the world manifests itself in all these various causes that you have banding together all over the place.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Even the most deft pen is a clumsy tool.

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.

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

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

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

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

Pro Tools was invented to quicken the recording process.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.'