Top 45 Mark Foster Quotes

I worked odd jobs delivering pizza, folding chairs, telemarketing, selling kitchen cutlery door to door.

I love countermelodies, I love hooks and melodies that stick in your head. If I could put 20 melodies in a song and they would all work together, I would.

I don’t consider myself an entertainer. I consider myself an artist, and I think with that comes responsibility.

That’s how life is: there are peaks and valleys in life, and that’s how I like to write songs.

When I started really playing music, I pretty much quit sports. I quit everything.

I love to honour people and to write positive songs about them.

I think artists throughout the history of time have always been controversial and have been a voice to speak to public culture in a way that a politician can’t because they’ll lose their constituency.

I didn’t want to be a soul singer.

I didn’t record ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ out of a sense of moral obligation.

I write songs based on things I see in the culture around me.

I wrote ‘Don’t Stop’ just like I wrote ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ – I didn’t try to make either a hit. I just wanted to write a song I liked.

We’ve grown up on the Beach Boys and the Beatles and Blur and Bowie and the Clash. Also E.L.O. and Hall and Oates. Those are all artists who write songs that are accessible but still left of center. It’s intelligent pop. There’s still something different and complex about it.

I play guitar, bass, drums, piano, and pretty much any sort of stringed instrument – besides violin or cello.

I wanted to be an attorney all the way up until I was 17.

I think my inner child wants to take over the world.

I feel like trying to write a song in order to be a big hit is just not something I’m interested in because it’s not going to come from an authentic place of expression.

I’m a really extreme person, and balance is probably the hardest thing for me to maintain.

Through technology and social media, we’re able to create an identity online that shows people the face that we want them to see and rather than who they really are.

Arcade Fire has kept their indie cred. They will sell out stadiums yet still have underdog status. But when you’re a band like Coldplay, people are waiting to knock you down.

There’s just really interesting facets of culture just swirling in Morocco. They all have slightly different colours, so it’s just an inspiring place to be.

I think that there’s a difference between being an entertainer and being an artist.

We’re not trying to be a mega-pop-band, but we also wouldn’t be opposed to selling millions of records, either.

I don’t like to write the same song twice.

‘Torches’ flowed together with interesting intros and outros. It was all very natural.

Once I write something, I never try to write that same style again, because I get very schizophrenic musically.

‘Supermodel’ was a hard record for me; it was an emotional record to write. I was purging a lot of stuff with that album, and I think the one thing I didn’t really consider, that I’d be supporting it for two years and living in that state of mind every night.

There were times when I was terrified to go to school because it felt like a jail sentence.

One thing about Foster the People is that it’s taking pieces of a lot of different genres of music and kind of melding them together.

During ‘Torches,’ I was more concerned with communicating the spirit of the song than the actual lyrics.

L.A. gives me a lot. L.A. is a city of extremes. People come here from all over the world that have these, like, giant ideas, and they put everything into it. And some people just fall flat on their face, and some people, you know, shoot like a rocket.

Going out and volunteering sounds simple, but many people don’t volunteer because they don’t know where to start.

When you’re underwater with goggles on, a couple of your senses are taken away, and it becomes this purely visual thing. It’s just you and yourself.

Foster the People wouldn’t exist without Mophonics.

When I’m writing songs, my favourite thing to do is to try and rabbit-trail and go places I’ve never gone to before. Just like exploring a new terrain or a new country or something.

I feel like my calling is to show people joy: to make them feel like there’s something to look forward to.

I remember, in middle school, I went to four different schools. That was a rough patch. But it’s also what shaped me as a person.

I truly believe that love is greater than politics.

I’ve written so many songs that are hopeful – songs that are, like, about an old man that gives all his possessions away because he wants to help people. I wrote ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ just to tell a different type of story.

When I put Foster The People together, I just wanted to play music with friends.

I write in character a lot.

I was always extremely independent growing up.

When I was 21, I was in a pretty serious band, and we almost got signed – went to New York, showcased, all that – but didn’t end up getting signed, and we broke up. I went back to the drawing board; I really took a hit from that whole experience.

I don’t care if it’s Dr. Dre or Dr. Luke or Brian Eno. When you’re in a studio and making music together, it becomes pretty apparent if you see eye to eye.

Art is observing society around you, representing it through your eyes.

There are career waiters in Los Angeles, and they’re making over $100,000 a year.