Quotes from Aaron Dessner

I am an expert at applying premade pesto to pasta.

One of the hardest things about being a musician is finishing a project and then having to wait three or six months to publish it and to do all the sort of promotional behaviour.

I'm very fortunate and grateful to wake up every morning in the rural countryside I live in, looking at farmland and these beautiful mountains.

It's very exciting to have a festival in the heart of Boston. It's an amazing experience to be in a city and to be able to walk in and out of a festival. I think that's part of what's going to make Boston Calling really special.

Sometimes you become the person people try to pin you into a corner to be, which is not really fair.

But I'd say recording and playing on stage are two completely different things. Being up there in front of all those people is like jumping off a cliff into icy water. The recording process is a totally different energy.

I kind of love opening, because it's easier and kind of just more fun to get up and play fast and furious and have a good time.

When you're working with someone new, it takes a second to understand their instincts and range. It's not really conscious.

And my parents live down in West Virginia, and I have to drive through the Shenandoah Valley pretty often to go visit them. You actually drive right by Gettysburg and some other spots where there were huge battles.

Anyone who's speaking up about anything becomes a target.

There's no one songwriter in the band. It's collaborative, and we all have different tastes.

For whatever reason, you gravitate to certain subjects, and I read a lot of history.

Whenever I write anything, I do sing to it, to try and make sure it's interesting or compelling to sing to. I've gotten in the habit of sharing that with other, more charismatic vocalists.

White people need to wake up and tell the truth about US history and the inequality and the ways in which racism is so entrenched.

I do have a way of playing piano where it's very melodic and emotional, but then often it's great if whoever's singing doesn't sing exactly what's in the piano melody, but maybe it's connected in some way.

My wife is from Copenhagen and her father has been a huge Liverpool supporter since the early 1960s.

The National guys will tell you the same thing - I tend to work until the last possible minute.

I busked a few times in Asheville, North Carolina, when I was 18. It was terrifying. I was probably just trying to meet girls.

I used to think of 'alternative rock' as a radio format, kind of the way 'indie rock' used to have more meaning. But it means different things depending on where you are or what country you're in.

There are some things that you see that are hard to talk about. You can't talk about it. You just bear witness to them.

Music for me is an emotional necessity. It's therapy. It's what I live and breathe.

There are people who want to hear what they consider your hits. There are people who want you to experiment and explore random, rare things. And it's kind of a different; they're two different beasts.

It's actually not that hard to play guitar in a rock band.

Our recordings, you feel that it's been, not labored, but you feel that it's been constructed in a way where sometimes it's hard for us to create the feeling that this was done in a room.