Top 79 Quotes & Sayings by Elliott Smith

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Elliott Smith.

Last updated on April 14, 2025.

Steven Paul Smith, known professionally as Elliott Smith, was an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Smith was born in Omaha, Nebraska, raised primarily in Texas, and lived much of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he first gained popularity. Smith's primary instrument was the guitar, though he also played piano, clarinet, bass guitar, drums, and harmonica. Smith had a distinctive vocal style, characterized by his "whispery, spiderweb-thin delivery", and often used multi-tracking to create vocal layers, textures, and harmonies.

American - Musician | August 6, 1969 - October 21, 2003

Source: Wikipedia

If you play acoustic guitar you're the depressed, sensitive guy.

Elliott Smith

I didn't know how many people knew who Ferdinand was.

Elliott Smith

It was kind of ridiculous to carry it up to a certain point and then drop the ball or the bomb, like quitting the band right after we had signed to Virgin.

Elliott Smith

The band's filter, but playing live is a lot of fun.

Elliott Smith

Well, I try not to think about the general public since I have no idea what the general public is and I don't think anybody does.

Elliott Smith

I watched myself put my paw in the bear trap on that one because there was this clause about leaving members.

Elliott Smith

I'm just writing songs about how I feel or about how people I know feel.

Elliott Smith

It's just that a lot of songs that are popular right now, they don't have any meaning.

Elliott Smith

I rode on a float in one of the parades in Mississippi. It's an experience.

Elliott Smith

But I was also doing odd jobs around Portland, like spreading gravel and transplanting bamboo trees.

Elliott Smith

It touches on drug use. I got caught up in that for almost two years.

Elliott Smith

Because God only knows why people like what they like and don't like something else.

Elliott Smith

I don't think that Dreamworks would have signed me expecting to really mess around with whatever it is I do.

Elliott Smith

I mean people just have a way of - y'know they'll review your record in two sentences and put you in this little stupid box that you don't want to be in.

Elliott Smith

I was coming off of a lot of psyche meds and other things.

Elliott Smith

I was trying to do the same thing that I always do which is make an interesting record.

Elliott Smith

It's a lot easier to tell the truth usually.

Elliott Smith

My girlfriend at the time convinced me to send these songs to Cavity Search. When they wanted to put out my record I was totally shocked.

Elliott Smith

I like home recordings and studio recordings just as much as each other - I don't think one is better - but for this record I wanted to see what I could do in a real studio with real producers.

Elliott Smith

There's always that argument to make - that you're in better company historically if people don't understand what you're doing.

Elliott Smith

I actually don't think that I'm gonna sell a lot of records.

Elliott Smith

I don't really like New York better than Portland. It's just a different place.

Elliott Smith

I didn't think I was gonna be playing on the Oscars or anything.

Elliott Smith

I can't think of anything off the top of my head that seems more important than something designed to raise money to keep something going that keeps IV drug users from dying.

Elliott Smith

There are lots of things I like about playing in a band, the things I can't do by myself you know.

Elliott Smith

I didn't have a hard time making it, I had a hard time letting it go.

Elliott Smith

I wondered if I would talk about drug use. But I guess, why hide it?

Elliott Smith

I just wanted to move out of Portland to do something.

Elliott Smith

And I'm not trying to write heavy songs.

Elliott Smith

They say that God makes problems just to see what you can stand, before you do as the devil pleases.

Elliott Smith

Haven't laughed this hard in a long time. I better stop now before I start crying. Go off to sleep in the sunshine...I don't want to see the day when its dying.

Elliott Smith

Everything means nothing to me

Elliott Smith

All your secret wishes could right now be coming true.

Elliott Smith

He made his life a lie so he might never have to know anyone.

Elliott Smith

So if somebody writes a song that appears to have some meaning then everybody thinks that it's a really heavy song.

Elliott Smith

You can take a picture of New York and one person looking at it will think it looks really depressing, frightening; and someone else will look at it and think of all the fun things you can do in New York. I think songs are kinda like that.

Elliott Smith

I don't really think of time off as writing blocks. I think that's a western notion of demonizing inactivity. When your imagination decides it needs to take a nap. maybe that's what it needs to do.

Elliott Smith

Everybody gets a tag. If you listen to a Velvet Underground record, you don't think, 'Godfathers of Punk.' You just think, 'This sounds great.' The tags are there in order to help try to sell something by giving it a name that's going to stick in somebody's memory. But it doesn't describe it. So 'depressing' isn't a word I would use to describe my music. But there is some sadness in it -- there has to be, so that the happiness in it will matter.

Elliott Smith

A lot of people are kind of depressed. I'm happy some of the time, and some of the time I'm not.

Elliott Smith

The devil's script sells you the heart of a blackbird.

Elliott Smith

You can't get better at things you never play.

Elliott Smith

Doing battle with themselves that way, every day, all the time and sometimes it sucks, but other times it results in people making sort of a dream comprehensible to someone else.

Elliott Smith

It's hard to represent chaos, or like an absence of something. It's much easier to represent the presence of something or a situation.

Elliott Smith

I liked the idea of a self-contained, endless pursuit of perfection. But I have a problem with perfection. I don't think perfection is very artful. But there's something I liked about the image of a skater going in this endless twisted circle that doesn't have any real endpoint. So the object is not to stop or arrive anywhere; it's just to make this thing as beautiful as they can.

Elliott Smith

I didn't have a hard time making it. I had a hard time letting it go.

Elliott Smith

Music is worth doing just because. It doesn’t have to be justified by some political point of view, and it’s kind of insulting to the music to make it a tool for something else.

Elliott Smith

I'm happy some of the time, and some of the time I'm not. But like when I see a movie, for example, that I really like, that moves me or whatever, it's usually happy and sad at the same time.

Elliott Smith

Somewhere where people aren't so mad would be nice, but I don't know if there is anywhere like that.

Elliott Smith

I truly hope the future will bring me something to feel nostalgic about, because there's really nothing much so far I can remember fondly.

Elliott Smith

Theres a bunch of Elvis Costello records that made all the difference between feeling like a total freak and feeling like ... only a freak. A freak among other freaks

Elliott Smith

People can be chaos but it's hard to fit it into some creative piece that you made. It's hard.

Elliott Smith

Static in my head, the reflected sound of everything, tried to go to where it led, but it didn't lead to anything.

Elliott Smith

There's lots of ways people can be dependent, on another person, or drugs.

Elliott Smith

I got tired of doing battle with people thinking I was a little weird because I wasn't in a band making happy, stilted music. The only people who really seem weird to me are people who think they're normal. People who think it's possible to be normal just by doing the same things that most people do. Is there a most people? I don't know. Television makes it seem like there is, but I think that might just be television.

Elliott Smith

I think the suggestion that all my songs are personal is insulting because that assumes that I have a bunch of issues that I feel the need to unload on strangers. That is not the case. It also assumes that I just talk about myself the whole time which, again, is not true.

Elliott Smith

People think they know all these things about other people, and if you ask them why they think they know that, it'd be hard for them to be convincing.

Elliott Smith

I think the music business will eventually crush me, but I [smiles]... I'm ready.

Elliott Smith

Playing things too safe is the most popular way to fail.

Elliott Smith

Certain songs just feel a way that's hard to put into words and it's not happy and it's also not really sad but I couldn't say what it is

Elliott Smith

Burning every bridge that I cross to find some beautiful place to get lost.

Elliott Smith