David Berman

My great grandfather was the last practicing Jew in my family. He died in 1982. ”

I always had a background belief in God. In other words, instinctually I've never doubted that we are not alone. ”

I don't know if I actually respect other artists as people as much as I should. I look at their work as excellent data that feeds my mind as nature feeds my body. ”

The rules changed for art around 1989. We were all loosed upon the canon to clip and paste and borrow and update. Only thing is, unless you were in New York or in a cultural studies program, that new paradigm probably wasn't going to sink in until the Internet arrived. ”

I don't think any songwriter who comes up through playing clubs can really claim to have independently developed their art. All along the way so much information is coming, the writer inside the performer unconsciously reacts to all of that. By the time they get to be thirty, the writer is gone. ”

In a lot of ways, I wouldn't be an artist in another time. I need to exist in a time where high and low art mix easily. ”

I don't have time for language poetry anymore. I don't want to throw people off anymore. ”

For a long time, I've struggled very, very much with what people call treatment-resistant depression. ”

The songs of mine that don't work, the ones that I wouldn't consider playing live for instance, fail to integrate their idiosyncracies. It's not that they fail because they're boring, but because they overreach. ”