Paul Westerberg Quotes

A rock'n'roll band needs to be able to get under people's skin. You should be able to clear the room at the drop of a hat.

The soul of rock 'n' roll is mistakes, and making mistakes work for you. The people who shy away from mistakes and play it safe have no business playing rock 'n' roll.

I try to write for highest common denominator. I don't write for dumb people. I figure if everybody doesn't get it, that's OK. Someone bright enough will get it, and that's who I write for. It's probably not the way to make million-sellers. What can I say? I won't apologize for trying to write for smart people.

Stick with your heart and you'll be fine.

Reading music is like listening to flowers. I don't understand the concept.

The ones that love us least, are the ones we'll die to please.

Nobody can miss you unless you go away.

I think it should be evident by now, but I'm as lost as anyone.

The hack songwriter will write the absolute truth every single word, whether it makes a great song or not.

People like to see human error when it’s honest. When people see you swing and miss, they start to root for you.

I'm beyond caring what anyone expects of me anymore.

I listen back, and I hear what's there, and I know in my heart, in my gut, that we [The Replacements] were the real deal. No one can take that away. You can call us buffoons, or clowns or whatever. But when we wanted to, we were as good as anybody.

Any musician who can stop may be a musician, but they're no artist. If it's in your blood, it can't stop flowing.

Nobody gets married to a clever song, let alone falls in love to one.

I used to write things that might have sounded better coming out of an older person's voice or vision. Hence, "grandpa-boy." I'm an old man, but I'm a boy. A really old boy!

Having a diverse sense of taste - or lack of taste - I loved so many different things. I was drawn to the stupidity and excitement of glam, I had a thorough upbringing in rhythm and blues.

We [The Replacements] never made any money on tour. None of us came out of the school of economics. We took it for granted that a rock and roll band gets ripped off. We've tried to shake that tree a couple of times, but what can we do? You look back, when you're sort of idle in your middle years, and think, we should have made some money.

It's fun, but the fun is where it always was. I mean, it's still fun to strap on my Les Paul in the basement and turn up the Marshall amp. I'm still 15. I still enjoy that as much as I ever did.

Right now, it hasn't affected my music other than the fact that I don't have time to write any of it. That's no different from when I first started and I lived at home. I would play the guitar in the afternoon and then my mom or my dad would come home and I'd have to quit.

Actually, I've done it the other way so many times where you rehearse the band and you do the whole thing with lights, the show and the crew - everything. Then you see what happens and you're already committed to dates. I'm just sort of putting out feelers this way.

There is that unpredictability of the seasons that I enjoy. I like the threat of a tornado. I like the threat of four feet of snow.

The best I can say is that it's better for me to write about despair and darkness than to be incapable of getting off the sofa. It's better to write about suicide than to contemplate it too heavily.

Although, my experience when I've been depressed, not only am I too depressed to sit down and write a song, I'm too depressed to pick up my feet. So if you can at least write about it, you're halfway away from it.

The sheer volumes of songs have come from the hours of cold and darkness that one spends inside with the lights on.

I'd been through crappy day jobs and stupid garage bands. I was determined to make it as a musician.