Top 198 Quotes & Sayings by Jack White - Page 4

Punk is an attitude, not a genre, age group, or time period. What's interesting is trying to define the blues and punk in different ways. They are very close cousins.

As an artist, you take things from your environment, and there's going to be a style coming out of your environment.

What you think is fake in your head comes off as not enough on camera, a lot of times. You almost have to overdo it, in this overly, sort of Broadway, large-gestures kind of way to come off as being realistic on camera. It's strange. You almost have to act really fake to come off looking real.

It's hard to find other musicians that push you to go somewhere new all the time.

I'm always afraid, because I do most of my stuff at home, where nobody bothers me, and I don't have to stroke somebody's ego or be careful about hurting someone's feelings. But I also want to know that I can still go into the world and be with other people and make music.

The day that music is taken for free by the majority is the day that the phrase "sell out" doesn't exist any more.

I have very little interest in the bottom line or signing artists to help make the label profit. That's a lucky, unique position to be in, but it all comes out in the wash.

Saying you love something out loud with the wrong intonation in your face can damn you and destroy what you're working on.

I probably could have a hip-hop-style entourage of 40 people coming with me to the club or whatever, and I don't do that. And I think sometimes maybe I should. It just makes things easier - if you don't like being by yourself, maybe just don't do it ever.

I made a rule for myself in my early 20s not to become a record collector in the sense that I reference all my old records. I can't live like that. I'd just be trapped in comparison, trying to emulate something, so I made a rule to just buy what I need, just the records I need.

I would never be able to live in a huge city. I'd feel like one of 100,000 people doing the same thing.

You need a little resistance-something to fight against.

You can't be an actor in a small town-you have to go to New York or L.A.

People have sort of a problem trying to see an end to a situation as being positive or romantic.

The big picture is a nice way to think of things if you have the freedom to.

If you're asking if I would be foolish enough, or insulting enough, to write about people in my life that I respect and sell it to the masses as a "break-up song," I can't imagine doing that to people I love.

I think I've been a good boy long enough and given everyone around me a fair piece of the pie as far as all of the fleeting glory and reward that comes from the heavens - or the music press, whatever you want to call it.

I think that most people, and by people I mean journalists, think that I pre-conceive everything and that I spend my afternoons dreaming up self-mythologizing points of interest.