Top 116 Quotes & Sayings by Mat Kearney - Page 2

Money definitely does not equal success in recording.

As an artist, you tend to gravitate to the opposite. I know, when I finish a song or an album, I'm interested in doing something completely new. It doesn't always happen, but that's the idea. My poor fans - I don't know if they love that or hate that.

I think my faith is a huge part of my music. But for me, it didn't make sense to be in any specific market. I write songs for a lot of different kinds of people.

When 'Young Love' came out, I was really excited, and it has been really special.

My songs have a layer of melancholy.

Songs like 'Learn To Love Again' and 'Rochester' and some of the more gut-wrenching ones deal with the pain of the younger times of your life... trying to make sense of some the stuff we probably all went through.

The first year I moved to Nashville, I started playing these songwriter nights with people like Nickel Creek, Duncan Sheik, and even Ryan Adams... That was the first place I really started playing music, and I had to really step up my game. Really quick. Or get kicked off the stage.

I started writing music in a season of my life where people were telling me I wasn't defined by mistakes, and God really loved me and was fighting for me, and there was a journey to be had with that. And I don't know of a more important message.

I was an English major, and I always wrote poems.

I think you can hear all my hip hop influences in 'Just Kids.'

My first album was hip-hop influenced, and my second was more of a singer-songwriter album.

When I set out to write, I want to write something that will rip your heart out and connect with you. Great songs connect beyond genre and style.

'City Of Black And White' was me trying to do something more mature, more adult contemporary.

Ultimately, when you write from a vantage point of faith, humility, and openness to the world around you, people have to respond because those same truths are instilled in them.

I don't think, to be a traveler, you have to reject setting roots up.

Paul Simon is the king!

Somehow, my music really suits doctors making out in the syringe room.

You write these songs which are really dear to you about your family or friends, loved ones, and then you get this call, and they say, 'It's perfect for two vampires making out in the back of a car.' It's some random TV show, and so I say, 'Oh, yeah, perfect - that's what I meant it for.'

There are people I love in Nashville and would not want to go a day without talking to, but I want to see the world.

Even on tour, where I perform songs from 'City Of Black And White,' I still do songs from 'Nothing Left To Lose.' I never turned my back on that material. On some albums, you change - that's all. The trick is to follow your heart and do what feels right.

Owl City is exactly as you'd imagine him. It's hard to have much on him. He's like a frightened bunny. I feel like if you yelled at him, he'd just dart to a corner of the room.

I am a micromanager, and I love being involved in every detail of my life, but in the big picture, you realize how little control you have. 'Air I Breathe' is about those moments of surrender where you get to something that is bigger than you, and you don't have answers for it.

Getting married and really digging in with another human being can point out your greatest strengths and your greatest weaknesses.

I love to play the songs that got me to where I am. I like to take a little bit from all of my records and mix it up.

When I was in college, I wanted to study film. My first passion was to be a cinematographer. So maybe there's something innate in my music where it partners well with images.

I'm painfully a realist but ruthlessly an optimist. I think maybe it's because of my faith - I've always got the hope that there is something out there to make it all worthwhile.

I've always sought to get after something that's foundational in people. That comes through my faith, through my belief in life, through trying to hit something that's true every time. I think that's really where you move people, when you touch on something that's true, that's not based on fluff or based on a moment or a movement.

I played soccer. I was really known as an athlete. It was a shock to people that I was doing music. They thought it was really odd.

The first record blew up and sold really well. 'City of Black & White' didn't sell as well, and that's when you wonder, 'Did I peak already?'

I love Bruce Springsteen's writing, but I grew up on '90s hip hop, like Tribe Called Quest.

With 'City of Black & White,' I wanted a record that would make you feel good, that would sort of take you up in its hand and sweep you along.

I started as a writer. I didn't play music until late in life.

'Nothing Left to Lose' was an album that I wrote in my bedroom, and you don't know who is listening or who cares.

I love being vulnerable. It's scary. I feel like the best stuff that I have ever written can come from real vulnerable places.

I enjoy changing; I think it's more fun to try something different than to just do what you did last time.

My artistic goal was to write something that's one hundred percent real and true to me and to this world. I tried to touch on truths that really connect with people from every avenue of life. Ultimately, when you write from a vantage point of faith, humility and openness to the world around you, people have to respond because those same truths are instilled in them. Honestly, I don't have any agenda other than being sincere, real, and passionate about these songs and the music I make.

Don't apologize for all the tears you've cried, you've been way too strong now for all your life.

Just because you've written a song doesn't mean that you have pulled through. There are definitely songs where I embodied someone else's pain and that was purely to serve the listener because I knew they needed to hear something. But most of the good stuff comes from my life.

I love creating moments that feel bigger than just like an artist on stage.

The songs that you start to write that you are a little scared of can be the ones that you have to tell.

I guess we're all one phone call from our knees

The stories that are too personally vulnerable to write are the ones that must be told.

I think one of the things that I carry, and just my goals in life, is just encourage people and make them feel joy and celebrated and they leave feeling like maybe there was stuff talked about that was difficult, but then there was a voice of redemption and grace in the middle of that.

I never play all new stuff, because you got to "dance with the girl that brought you" what is that saying? You got to play the songs that got you there, so I love playing the songs from my very first record.

There's a truth to the fact that it's hard to be real. It's easy to be indulgent. It's easy to be bubble gum, but it's hard to find a real thing that really makes your soul tick. It's painful and honest. It can be more challenging than just a sad song.

As an artist, you just want to keep creating, keep finding a place that really inspires you that feels fresh and new and keep it exciting.

Songs really tend to connect.

Trying to find a heart that's not walking away.

If you make people think they're thinking they'll like you, but if you make people actually think, then watch out, you're not going to be popular.

Life's too short to stay where we are.

When I set out to write, I want to write something that will rip your heart out.

I am not an evangelist. I am not a preacher. I am a musician. That is what I know how to do. I know how to write songs. I know how to write things that relate to my heart. I feel that I talk about God in every song, in everything I do - all of it! I really do not know how to respond. I do not relate to that.

As my uncle always says, 'If your vibe outweighs your substance, you're destined to be a novelty.' I think that is true in all art.

It's not the circumstances that determine who you're gonna be but how you deal with these problems and pains that come your way.

Well, I never made a record to be in the Christian market. So when I made my record it was to exist in all of the markets. I grew up not really listening to tons of Christian music and if I did it was in the context of all the other music I listened to. So when I made the record I definitely had plans and visions and dreams.

I love creating. I am addicted to the drug of creation and creating things. I get a little depressed when I am struggling to find what I know is locked inside. If it's a lyric or something that is challenging me, I can be very depressed, but when it's like heaven opens up and it gives you a song, it's amazing. There's nothing else that I enjoy more probably.