Julian Casablancas Quotations

If you're in a bar and a certain song comes on and the vibe is just different, it evokes the kinds of things that you want to feel, and if music can do that it's a very special thing.

Who you are vs. who you wish you were: Who wins?

The thing for me is I never had this burning desire to do a solo record my whole life.

Making an album can be like being pregnant: you want to pop that thing out and show everybody!

In most cultures, you can have a kid at 18 and it's not a big thing. It's not like, 'Oh, you've got to get a different haircut and move to the suburbs and act, like, 35.'

Can our mind evolve to be something other than an extension of our animal needs?

Greed is the inventor of injustice as well as the current enforcer.

Religion is never the problem; it's the people who use it to gain power.

For a long time I didn't want to do a solo thing, but there comes a point where everyone else is going outside of The Strokes and The Strokes filtering process.

With a hundred ways to do a dozen things, why not try it all?

Vanity can easily overtake wisdom. It usually overtakes common sense.

It find it funny how people from Boston and New York hate each other because of pro teams.

I'm happy to feed the illusion that I'm a lazy recluse.

I find it funny how people from Boston and New York hate each other because of pro teams. But, like, everyone on the Red Sox is a random millionaire athlete from somewhere else.

I would prefer it if people thought that I didn't work hard, that I just played the guitar for three minutes a week and was like, 'Check out this song - what do you think?' That would be ideal. I would prefer telling people that I'm just truly talented.

The artistic element of Manhattan has kind of moved to Brooklyn. Has it changed it? Yeah. Has it ruined it? I would say no. It is what it is. I say better that than an urban war zone.

If the choice is between doing something supercool and having no one hear it and doing something equally cool and tricking people into putting it on the radio, I don't think the second option is some big sellout.

I'm just going to try and be a good dad and not spoil the kid: give him love and encouragement but also discipline. Me and my woman, we don't want him to feel too entitled.

When the Strokes first started playing gigs, instead of getting into a costume for the shows, we talked about how we should dress every day, in real life, like we're playing onstage. I don't really care about clothes, but it's about wearing something that gives you social confidence. Or maybe helps you pick up chicks.

A band is a good way to break up a friendship.

Working on music is the funnest thing for me, and I love it, and I could do it all day, all night.

My parents separated when I was eight. I grew up with my mom alone.

Songwriting is hard - it's so easy to fall into the same traps. It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.

The best solutions are often simple, yet unexpected.

I always reference 'Mad Max' when I think about what I want to wear. But it's a fine line between that and 'Edward Scissorhands'.

The period of earthly life in your greater existence is similar to the 15 minutes of fame you get down here...Everyone gets to share you in a different way. And both are dreams.

One of the big songwriting things for me has always been: always think what you do sucks. Because the second you stop believing that, you suck. And that's a fact.

I guess I'm of two minds about (that). One half accepts it, I'm grateful for anything I can get. And the other half, the motivated part of me wants to have the same thing going here in the United States.

I don't care what people think or what they expected. It's what (critics) said, not us.

I'm always writing something. I've got so much stuff, I don't know what to do with it. Some of it will be Strokes, some of it will be I don't know what - stuff for pop singers. TV themes. I've got a jar stuffed with songs, all these ideas that are just me humming into a recording device.

I thought we were playing a bar. But this is nice.

L.A.'s kind of, like, seven really cool towns. It's so laid-back. If you go in the right spot, you can walk around, and you don't need a car.

L.A. is a vortex. The weather there tricks you into thinking you're on vacation, even when you're working fourteen hours a day.

I think it's sort of a scary thing you don't really want to face. I definitely feel like we had to do something special (with the new record) or people potentially really wouldn't care about us.

People are always arguing: New York or L.A.? They're both great places, you know.

I think I used to do everything and then people had a problem with that within the band, so we're doing more of a communal thing.

You always want to do that. But that wasn't necessarily the strategy. But I do think you're always trying to take it to the next level. We've been working on it for months. Hopefully if it sounds like a burst of good songs, that's fine. I'll take that.

The sizes seem right. It's pretty much as big as you get without feeling detached or too far away from the people at the back of the audience. It's as big as you get while still involving the last row - isn't that what you look for in a venue? Hopefully they just have a great time. Hopefully it's just a great show. Whatever that does to different people, whether it's blowing your mind or just making you have a good time that night.

Thanks for passing the torch...I think I burned my hand, though.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the deafening roar.

Austin is the most swinging of towns, this is one of the greatest audiences we've ever had.

That's nice of you to say. We're sort of staying afloat despite not fitting into . . . the corporate rules of commercial success. Somehow we've arrived somewhere cool despite not knowing where the ship was going to pop out after the storm.

It was 100,000 years before we figured out what to do with fire. Humans learned how to use fire to cook 100, 000 years after they discovered how to make it. Imagine cavemen, sitting in front of a fire, eating raw meat for 100 thousand years.

Things happened so fast. In some ways, it's better to come in second at first because it humbles you and you end up being focused and work harder.

It's like an inner struggle for me, between saying I don't give a **** and trying to make it work. You want to do the right thing, but I'm sick of people thinking I'm difficult.

It's that feeling when you hear your favourite song. That feeling, whether you're in a car, at a party or alone at home or in bed and you hear this song and it just hits you so strong - that’s what we aim for.

When I hear Sam Cooke's 'A Change Is Gonna Come', it frustrates me because no matter how hard I try, I can never be that good.

The British press can be so annoying. They jerk you off with one hand and smack you with the other.

I always want to make Strokes records and play Strokes shows.

I enjoy songwriting. It's slow-motion improvising.

I want to be one of those people, be they writers, poets, musicians, who leaves clues for the next generation. The really good people leave clues that help feed the human race. That's my aspiration.

I'd like to just get to a point where maybe we can say something that will be matterful. That's definitely not a word, by the way.

I see myself out of my own eyes, which means I have no idea what's going on the other way around. I just think I try to be a good person, and I fail.

I feel like I've given up a lot of my fantasies. I just want to do things differently, and to a lot of people that's annoying. I like weird stuff. I always hoped if we had a big success it would be on our own terms…

I don’t shake at the site of alcohol anymore. I don’t feel the need for it. If anything I’ll get stoned. I always told myself if it got to the point that it was affecting my songwriting and music that I’d stop. And it did get to the point.

It was 100,000 years before we figured out what to do with fire. Imagine cavemen, sitting in front of a fire, eating raw meat for 100 thousand years.

There are so many little places I want to play, sometimes weird places I think would be fun to play... a bar that's half full.

That it's a lot harder to make a keyboard sound not-cheesy than a guitar.

Birth is a beautiful thing.

I think all of Manhattan has pretty much become a bar-slash-nightclub-slash-restaurant. There were always pockets of that. But now every corner of Manhattan is that.

I think a lot of people study the rules too much and then don't know how to be creative.

No one leaves an old friend unless they are ashamed.

I over-think stuff a lot.

A band is a great way to destroy a friendship, and a tour's a great way to destroy a band.

But it can be hard to experiment when you're in a band.

Compared to people in Africa, I think we've all had privileged upbringings.

I am a fan of 'SNL' and a big Jimmy Fallon fan, too.

L.A. is a vortex. The weather there tricks you into thinking you're on vacation, even when you're working fourteen hours a day.

No matter who I'm talking to, I always talk like I'm doing an interview.

The Strokes can play anything. They could play 'Thriller,' and it would just sound like 'Thriller' as played by the Strokes.

I feel slightly confused about certain things. Practical and tactical things. When you try to make everyone happy… in the end you've got to make yourself happy.

Don't you dare get to the top and not know what to do.

The way Lou Reed wrote and sang about drugs and sex, about the people around him — it was so matter-of-fact,

I mean, I guess you could say I'm a bit of a perfectionist.

Sometimes I've sat outside, not to tan, but as a result of that I ended up tanning slightly.

L.A.'s kind of, like, seven really cool towns. It's so laid-back. If you go in the right spot, you can walk around, and you don't need a car.

Now, the good of business is put above anything else, as corporations have become the new ruling body. Most decisions seem to be made like ones of a medieval king: whatever makes profit while ignoring and repressing the truth about whatever suffering it may cause (like pop music, for that matter).

We're so quick to point out our own flaws in others.

I very often have night terrors. Just think of the worst possible situation, and it's a regular thing for me. I've died in my sleep twenty-three different ways.

I guess the best thing about marriage is the fact you've got the coolest partner you can imagine by your side for all the things you're going to face in your life. So far, Juliet's been there for me. She's been good for my voice, good for my everything.

I'm not a pop song lyric writer. I can't just focus on one simple meaning or even a double entendre.

You know some of the people in The Strokes, yeah, their parents had success - but we didn't live like yuppies.

A tour is the most intense, stimulating way to hear music; it's the best form to receive it. There's genuine excitement from people. I feel like we've stepped up a level.

It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.

If it doesn't start with you, it dies with you.

Whenever I go to shows, I end up looking at what shoes the guy onstage is wearing and the jacket he's got on. And when you know everything's gonna be under scrutiny, it makes you feel more comfortable if you have cool stuff.

When you first start writing a song, it's fun, then when you start recording it, it's fun, but by the time you've finished recording it, you're sick of it.

Kids are always honest, 'cause they don't think they're ever going to die.

People are always arguing: New York or L.A.? They're both great places, you know.

Doing heroin is like walking around with a terrorist as your friend. It's like taking a terrorist around to parties You never know when it's going to blow up on you.

People often put me in a V-neck tennis club sweater, driving a Bentley, but my life wasn't like that.

The problem with touring isn't the traveling and the shows, it's the vegetal state you get into.

I'm really grateful. But I never had the rock star dream. I thought it would be cool to be a modern-day composer.

Make sure your heart is singing right until the day it stops.

I have to say, I'm good with gifts. If I find something perfect for a certain person, I'll just get it and put it away in a kind of nook under my bed - a little gift hutch, if you prefer.

I kinda like messing with perception a little bit. Kind of what drugs do sometimes, and drinking. I mean, you know, you mess with your mind a little bit to see life from different angles. Within reason, if you can handle it.

Just slow it down enough to enjoy the ride.

Art is the image of life, it's purpose simply to enhance it.

I don't really care about clothes, but it's about wearing something that gives you social confidence.

The best artists are the ones that work the hardest, and if you work hard enough, you'll eventually experience the happy accidents that are art.