Quotes from Andrew Bird

There's a lot of interesting words, nomenclatures, in science.

Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound.

A good espresso to me is a little bit salty; you just become used to a good taste. Anytime I go into a new place and they don't clean their machine properly or the water temperature isn't right, it tastes awful.

What you see with your eyes when you're making music is going to have a profound effect on what you hear.

I spend a lot of time working by myself developing songs, but I really need some other counterpart to help me pull it all together, because you go nuts working if I had to finish an entire project all within my own head.

The problem is, when you're working with orchestras, you only get the orchestra for about two hours before the performance to pull it all together, and that doesn't sound like a real collaboration.

I think life is a wondrous thing. I'm happy to try pretty hard.

Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.

Sometimes I think I don't have much choice in the matter. It's just what happens, and I'm following my instincts the whole time.

I've always been fascinated and stared at maps for hours as a kid. I've especially been most intrigued by the uninhabited or lonelier places on the planet. Like Greenland, for instance, or just recently flying over Alaska and a chain of icy, mountainous islands, uninhabited.

No, it's not dissatisfaction that inspires me to tinker with my songs, it's just restlessness.

I've always found that whatever you say about indie rock, it is the most inclusive genre or title for anything. It doesn't pin you down too much, like other labels would. It's just newer, it has less baggage. I'm happy to be in that category.

If you take a little time, let's say three weeks off, after recording a song, and you listen to it every other day, you're just going to know eventually.

The real drag is trying to fly from country to country, day of show, with all your gear. You get hassled all the time. It's hard trying to keep it together.

I still kind of believe this absurd line that if you have to write it down, it's not worth remembering.

I think I'm still a little too intense for my own good sometimes.

Maybe it's just, I've always been to the less traveled places, in any topic, whether it's history, I always like to just choose the most obscure topic. And I don't know why I have that impulse. I can't really explain it but I've been doing that since I was a little kid.

I am, in some sense, a writer. Even though I kinda downplay the word thing, I do enjoy writing sometimes.

The idea of writing songs because you're depressed and you need to communicate it somehow, that isn't really true for me.

I write a lot more when I'm happy, because you're hopeful, you're motivated.

The fact that I wasn't expected to read music at all and was absorbing everything by ear... it had a huge affect on the kind of musician that I became.

I've done my share of busking, and it's fun until it isn't. There are musicians in the subways that will make you cry, they're so good.

What's cool about indie rock is that one band can do effectively the same thing as another band, and one band nails it, and the other one doesn't. I like that elusiveness.

You travel with the hope that something unexpected will happen. It has to do with enjoying being lost and figuring it out and the satisfaction. I always get a little disappointed when I know too well where I'm going, or when I've lived in a place so long that there's no chance I could possibly get lost.