Matt Berninger quotes:

A person with grace is somebody who's socially graceful or is a classy person, but sometimes you just feel the opposite of that, and you just feel like a jerk and a loser and a weirdo.

Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave know best. Although I wear a lot of jeans, I've been told that Nick Cave doesn't own a pair and wouldn't be caught dead in denim.

At first, when 'Boxer' came out, people were a little let down, and we worried that it might be the end for us. But then it began to grow on people. 'Boxer' bought us our creative freedom.

Sometimes you have to wear what you want.

Usually, writing lyrics for me is like bleeding drop by drop from the forehead.

I'm a stubborn guy that loses his temper, sometimes driving the station wagon in the wrong direction for hours and hours and never admitting that he's gone the wrong way.

A lot of my lyrics are approximate meaning without me knowing why they sound right.

I don't play an instrument. I pretend. I try to.

My favourite store? Seize Sur Vingt in New York. They make most of my suits, and they are really cool people.

I love to make songs out of some of those shadows - you know, some of the things you lie awake thinking about, social anxieties and romantic insecurities and all that stuff.

People will dig their heels in and fight for the things they love and against the things they hate.

I do a lot of editing and switching around and putting little pieces together to get the right mood and personality, and it takes me forever to get a song finished.

Alligator' was the first record that anyone paid attention to, and it seemed like it was the screamy songs that got us that attention.

I don't love being on the road.

I became at peace with the darkness or the personality that I have. I am usually pretty funny and happy.

Getting on stage and performing and standing under lights is such an unsettling experience - in a good and bad way - but it's the only place I can go to feel comfortable.

The lyrics are what I work on the hardest, but I'm not trying to make a perfectly clear message or anything like that. In fact, I'm usually trying to avoid saying something too directly, because usually that rings false anyway.

The truth is, I'm pretty lighthearted.

Once you do have a child, you want to talk about every detail of it. And it is really boring to all your friends, and it should be. I was really worried about even going there at all.

The same song can have drastically different feels and personalities just by changing some minor things. A different drumbeat or some vocal overdub could completely transform the song.

A lot of the lyrics I write involve images that just swing the song in a way that feels really good to me and there isn't a literal explanation. They're not riddles for the listener to solve.

A different drumbeat or some vocal overdub could completely transform the song.

A song is a song and, if I am emotionally connected to do it, whether it is sad or not sad, I am going to chase that song.

I actually don't go to shows anymore. Rock concerts have lost their appeal for me.

I can never turn a tour into a vacation.

I don't want somebody telling my daughter who she can marry, or what she can do with her body. That's what was at stake.

I drink wine on stage to sort of loosen my grip on reality a little.

I focus on the words and then I have fun putting together the music after.

I have pit bulls barking at me on half of the love songs.

I never sit and fill a journal with lyrics. Most of the time I'm trying to write a feeling, not a story. I'm not necessarily trying to describe the details of a place or event so much as the feeling of the thing. It is a kind of weird alchemy that is elusive until it feels right.

I think most people start rock bands in their early twenties or teens, but I was almost thirty at the time when the band started really doing anything and it took another several years before people started caring about us.

I usually always think of characters and sometimes the characters are a little bit invented, so it's nice to give these invented, blurry, personas an actually name. It makes me get closer to them or something like that. But they're not all real, they're weird amalgamations of reality.

I'm doing a little freelance work, and I think everybody's trying to take their minds off rock and roll for a little while and get some perspective.

I'm trying to figure out how to record at home because I have a tiny house and a seven-year-old and my wife also works at home. So I can't work in the house because she's trying to write, so I pitched a tent in the backyard. I'm literally trying to record in the tent.

It's not hard to connect with the music on an emotional level and get inside the songs. It's odd, very vulnerable, and slightly embarrassing to be standing and singing and playing music in front of a bunch of strangers.

I've never had so much fun being back at my job sitting in front of my computer. Compared to 10 months on the road, going home and sleeping in my own bed every night is really nice.

I've never quite felt totally comfortable up on stage. I've gotten more comfortable, but drinking wine is a crutch that gives me a little courage. It helps me lose a little bit of the self-consciousness and the awareness of how awkward it is standing on a stage with lights and a bunch of people looking at you while you sing love songs.

Live on coffee and flowers. Try not to worry what the weather will be.

Lyrics need to be good, but they don't need to be obvious right away.

Maybe because I have spent too much of my life in rock clubs. I don't really go to parties anymore either. I'll usually be in the bus by 11:30 after a show.

Music has got a community vibe to it that pulls people together, and those communities are different in different places.

My parents know that I have always been sort of a dark melodramatic kid, so they were never concerned.

Not all the songs are real events, but I do write about stuff that is close to my heart and it comes out one way or another.

Somehow, you realize you can kind of do anything in music. You don't have to be good at a certain thing; you can just do whatever you want.

The last thing you want to do is write songs about being in a band.

The song 'Humiliation' is kind of about what if, outside of a dinner party or something, I was blown up by a drone missile, out by the pool. What an embarrassing way to go.

Trying to make it and get people to respect your band, being a cool band-all of that stuff-I think we've arrived at a place where we have kids and everything is in perspective and it doesn't matter.

Weirdly, I was still trying to be the older brother, and trying to get him [ Tom Berninger] to try to be more like me a little bit. Or not be more like me but ... I was frustrated that he sometimes let things stop him in his life, and he let the wind get knocked out of his sails a few times.

When I have just sat down and tried to write the lyrics of a song, usually about half of it sounds like bullshit. I just have to go away from something and come back to it again later. I do a lot of editing and switching around and putting little pieces together to get the right mood and personality, and it takes me forever to get a song finished.

You gotta lean towards the things that make you like yourself. Forget everything else.

It is the melody and the rhythm that are by far the most important and then words and imagery and stuff, story bits will start to stick to a melody and that is the way I write.

I'm not saying I'm not a moody guy sometimes, but I think I have a pretty normal balance.