Top 55 Chris Thile Quotes

Really the greatest music I’ve ever heard I’ve hated the first time I heard it. It’s been abrasive at first; it’s been something that challenged me in a way that I wasn’t fully comfortable with.

I love music with everything I have, and when I am in a front of a classroom talking about music sometimes someone will ask me a question and it reminds me to really think about something, to really feel something.

There’s something about a variety show, I think, that disarms us as consumers of something. We’re laughing, and there’s this sense of anything goes, anything could happen.

The constructive criticism that I take very seriously is from people I know and respect, and they don’t have to be musicians. But I do have to know where they’re coming from.

The power of live music is vast. Live music is a wonderful way to spend some time.

You know, I look at Twitter as kind of a roomful of people who are interested in what you have to say. The people who follow you are, presumably, somewhat interested with what you have to say.

I think, until I was 16, classical music had just seemed like a little bit of a rhythmic wasteland for me. Coming from bluegrass, where one conducts oneself rhythmically, it seemed like such a different approach, and at that point the difference that I was noticing was a real turn off to me.

You go to the Grammys and you say, ‘I don’t care if I win or not,’ and of course you care.

I don’t feel that things need make their appeal exclusively to one demographic. I don’t feel that there is truly great art that only appeals to people in a certain age range.

I love music so much. It’s like the one thing I’m good at.

Different people need different things.

I love putting on shows. I absolutely adore it – that’s why I’ve been doing it now for so long.

No one wants to hear me doing my best Garrison Keillor… I think that he’s inimitable; he’s one in a billion.

I’m obsessed with the idea of genrelessness and generationlessness.

I’m slow by nature; even if I write something fast, I’ll let it sit for a month and hem and haw over it.

For years, my actual listening activity has been governed by what I perceived to be good for me as a musician, almost like the way an athlete trains for a given sporting task. I’d listen to something if I felt it would improve my sense of harmony or counterpoint, or whatever I was working on.

For one, the whole concept of ‘Live From Here’ – writing a song every week – was like composition bootcamp.

My life conforms to music, not the other way around.

Tradition matters. To me it’s not a limiting force; it’s a springboard.

I can’t listen to music while I’m doing something else. Well, unless I’m working out. But I, like, fall off the treadmill all the time if I’m listening to something that I like too much.

Growing up in a bluegrass or acoustic-oriented world, the musicians become so focused on performance, as far as playing. We tend to overanalyze the notes, so you’re always trying to sharpen everything up.

I’m really not handy. I’m not good at things like changing a light bulb. If something is broken, the chances of me being able to fix it are slim to none.

Music should never be a dictatorship. It should be a symbiotic relationship between the musician and the audience.

Presenting the American songbook as a living, breathing entity that’s expanding all the time is very important.

The greatest creators are as hungry to consume as they are to create.

For me, music always leads. Lyrics are only about how they sing. It is wonderful if they read well, too. In the very best scenario, sometimes a lyric will pop out with a melody, simultaneously. That’s a lovely thing, but you can’t rely on that.

I guess I am working pretty much all the time.

Hats off to musicians who just want a pure escape. I have a lot of fondness for pure escapism. I don’t feel like it’s irresponsible, I think sometimes you really need to take a breather.

The world’s music is at our fingertips, so if we like music, we kind of owe it to ourselves to check in with all of that.

Having small children, you start thinking about how everything in your life revolves around doing the best you can for this little being, trying to make a good life for that person.

I consider it a great honor to be part of the dissemination of hearable art.

Everyone talks about how depressing Radiohead are. I don’t hear it. They’ve created their own universe and it is dimly lit, but it’s not inherently dark.

In my mind, there’s this one ‘super genre,’ which is the only genre that matters, and that’s the super genre of good music.

Improvisation is an important part of bluegrass, and I would hasten to add that classical music wasn’t always such an improvisational void. Back in the day, everyone’s cadenzas were improvised, and improvisation was taught in conservatories.

The radio – this old piece of technology that’s still crackingly current – gives you this communal experience in real time.

It’s important to allow people to affect you. If we kept that at the forefront of our minds, maybe we wouldn’t be as divided as we are.

Coffee is pretty big in my life. It shows up in my lyrics a bunch, the same way the ocean does. It’s a constant force.

There’s a lot of steps between there not being music and there being music. Composition is one part of that, but if no one performs it… It’s like if a tree falls in the forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?

What makes one type of music classical and one bluegrass and one folk – these things aren’t what’s important.

I play the mandolin, which people don’t often expect great things from. But it has it’s charms, and it’s my voice. I feel like I had as little choice in the matter as I do my speaking and singing voice.

Improvising is writing, too – there was no music and now there’s music. So that’s composition. And any time you take any sort of a performance liberty, you’re making a compositional choice. I don’t know a serious performer who hasn’t made compositional decisions, who hasn’t engaged in the art of composition.

My folks were and are devoted public radio fans, who started listening to ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ in the 1980s; Garrison and Co. were the permanent headliners of their weekends.

I just love getting as many experiences making music for and with people as possible.

A cocktail and an oyster is an awfully good thing after a park, especially one close to water.

My grandmother got me recordings of the ‘Goldberg Variations,’ in addition to the ‘Brandenburg Concertos,’ the Mozart string quartets and Beethoven’s ‘Seventh Symphony.’

Since I was little, I’ve always put a lot of pressure on myself.

I think there’s probably really wonderful music that has been lost due to the lack of preservation methods way back in the day.

My musical output has been consistently acoustic, but my taste has not. I love everything. As long as it’s good, I’m in.

I’m always going to need to play in front of people.

To be able to rub shoulders with kids who have spent their entire lives studying the classics… that’s something I need to improve my overview.

Bill Monroe is not singing about life in America. He’s singing about life in Kentucky and Tennessee. And yet it’s had this tremendous impact, not just in America but in the world. Why is Bill Monroe’s hyper-regional music so universal? We can be so different and yet still share a tremendous amount.

I went through a political shift when I was nineteen or twenty. I felt a certain way, and after the shift, I felt the opposite way. And never once did someone yelling at me or making me feel stupid do anything other than reinforce the convictions I had. What did get to me was people listening to me.

The goal of serious musicians is to play outside of yourself. That’s most likely with people who suggest things that are outside your musical experience.

We love music, and when it’s good we flip. And we want to get to the core of why it’s good.

I certainly love the bluegrass ensemble, I think it’s a powerful tool, but I don’t think it’s more than a tool.