Top 60 John Grant Quotes

Sometimes I wish I was one of those artists like David Bowie. They’re not putting their private lives out there; it’s about show and entertainment. But an alter ego is very dangerous for me. Because I am the guy who will become lost in that.

I don’t feel like I’m writing music for gay people. I’m a gay man who is writing music about one tiny little experience of what it’s like to be a human on this planet.

Part of what I do, after feeling invisible for a long time, is make an effort not to be invisible any more.

I feel uncomfortable when I think about my father listening to my records, because I don’t want to hurt him.

The rejection I received when I was young for being a homosexual… that’s nothing compared to the number you do on yourself when you’ve been taught that you are not a human like other people.

I think the thing that I find the most difficult to talk about is religion.

I felt like a failure for so long because I wasn’t able to access myself in the way I knew I would have if I was going to make music that mattered. I knew I was going to have to learn how to be honest.

The only difficult thing is learning to recognise the interesting bits from those millions of moments life provides you with every day and writing down those snippets.

I can’t allow myself to censor myself.

I still deal with triggers and neuroses that I’ve developed over the decades. But I do think I have a great amount of compassion for people who feel that they don’t fit in, or people who feel they have trouble finding their place in this world.

I’m quite gregarious. But when it comes to relationships, I mean, I’m no good at it. I suck at it. And people say I’m way too hard on myself, but I always feel like somebody else is going to say it if I don’t. Why not just beat them to the punch so it doesn’t hurt so much?

Icelanders love to speak English. Their English is a joy to hear because of how colloquial and idiomatic it is, but they appreciate your efforts with Icelandic.

If ‘Queen Of Denmark’ was about my childhood, then ‘Pale Green Ghosts’ is definitely about my adolescence, and that period was completely dominated by electronic music.

I’m angry because I was so scared for so many years about just being myself.

I’m not saying that I don’t have skills. I’m saying I don’t feel like I can use my skills to achieve self-esteem. I feel like it’s cheating. I think that I should have self-esteem simply because I am a human being who deserves love and deserves everything just as much or just as little as everyone else.

When I write my songs, I’m writing about the pain, the joy, and the ridiculousness of being a human.

The lion’s share of what I listened to in the Eighties, what really affected me, was coming from Britain.

I know I’m likeable, but living with me is different. Yes, I can be charming. That desire to please people and learning what to do to charm their socks off is something many of us do. But you get into a relationship, and the party’s over at some point. They see the real you.

I’ve kept most of my friends for decades, and I continue to make new friends.

I’m a seriously flawed individual, but I guess everybody is.

I think I have a great voice, but it’s not special enough to be remembered. But what’s special about me is much more than just my voice.

I would love to be part of a community.

Me becoming a person, instead of somebody who just hides and is afraid, has happened in tandem with me learning to write music and become a good songwriter.

In my family, I was loved, but only if I would fight this gay thing and not let it take over me. I would be loved unconditionally if I could be cured of my ‘sickness,’ but it certainly would not be OK if I couldn’t.

I love a lot of different styles, but my heart belongs in electronic music.

Most of the bad things that have happened to me happened in Denver.

I just felt that I was going to fall apart if I didn’t learn to be myself.

I spend a lot of my time just looking at words and grammar and writing things down that I don’t know.

I love that phrase that parents say to their children when they cry: ‘I’ll give you something to cry about.’

I overthink everything.

When I came out, I found I hadn’t been born with the right genes. It’s quite brutal. If you’re beautiful and you have the right genes, then the gay scene is a place where you can be worshipped. But if you don’t, it’s a different ball of wax.

I don’t really listen to my old music.

I believe humans have a soul that continues to exist after they die, but I don’t know what form that will take.

I have trouble with things like Facebook. It presents such a warped vision. I get sick of people’s opinions about every little thing and this warped view that everyone is as happy as a pig in garbage.

The thing is I don’t feel like my story is special. I don’t feel like it’s different to anybody else.

People have always painted me like a pessimist, like somebody who sees the glass half-empty. But I think the fact that I keep showing up and saying, ‘No, there must be a way for me to live in this world,’ that shows I’m an eternal optimist.

I realized that a lot of the things I had been telling myself about not being good enough just weren’t true, and ‘Queen of Denmark’ gave me the chance to prove to myself that I could do something real.

I don’t really experience much embarrassment.

Being embraced by the British people is a beautiful compliment for me. It feels very special.

There’s an incredible amount of pain involved in being a human, but this humorous stuff is essential in overcoming it.

Do you know the solo at the end of ‘Why Don’t You Love Me Any More?’ that sounds like a chainsaw breaking through? That is what I can’t do with my voice. That’s when you hear how painful this has been to me.

I can’t create music if I’m wearing a mask and not being myself, and that was the problem with The Czars.

The lead character in ‘Adaptation’ is pretty much me but with more talent. Every time I watch ‘Adaptation,’ I feel very emotional because it makes me be kinder to myself and see the human situation a little more clearly.

I seem to be very attracted to strong female personalities in acting and music.

I can only live in the world of truth, inasmuch as I’m able to be truthful with myself at any given point, on any given day.

The snappier lyrics come when I’m feeling really good and up. A lot of times, they come after I’ve just had a meeting with somebody that was uplifting, and you get home, and you’re feeling playful or upbeat or whatever, and then they just seem to pop right out.

It’s not like we wanted to talk about the fact that we’re gay all the time, but the world has forced it to be an issue.

I’ve kept going to therapy to find out why my perspective is so skewered and why I’m filled with rage. It’s so I can live in this world alongside these other people who seem to be what is desired and what the world wants.

If I’m honest, I suppose there’s something I don’t want people to see in my eyes. They really are the window to the soul.

I don’t let the computer into my bedroom. It would get in the way of life, sleep. And I really can’t let that happen.

When I reached my senior year in high school, I fell into a hole that took a couple of decades to get out of.

The first 20 years had such a profound effect on me, I spent the next 20 dealing with them.

I love patchwork quilts. But not in music.

When I got into languages, I needed to amass things to make myself more palatable or more acceptable as a human.

My music is definitely very personal. The songs are about moments, snapshots of everyday life, and about having one’s say, or at least feeling like one has had one’s say.

Becoming a musician was all about escape. It was about getting away from the foulness that was me.

I could probably use some tips from a vocal trainer or something about breathing, but we all know it’s not about technical prowess.

I loved the whole New Romantic, New Wave thing… New Order, Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, Blancmange, Yazoo.

I feel like, in the Czars, for example, I was afraid. I couldn’t express myself. I didn’t have a connection to myself. That’s one of the huge reasons why it was such a difficult existence. I put a lot of that on myself. I couldn’t access myself. I couldn’t look at myself, because I was too ashamed.

I suppose my ideal brain food is learning languages.