A Quote by Ben Silbermann

I was obsessed with this idea that these things that you collect, they just say so much about who you are. I can't say it came from hard-nosed business analysis... It was just something I really want to see built.
I don't understand why it's more socially acceptable to say that you are a shallow person than to just say this is not something you want to do. Especially because it's a really hard job. It's a really important job. And why the hell should you do a really hard, important job that you don't want to do? That has extremely high stakes? That just blows my mind.
It's very hard, I think, for critics to write positive reviews, because there's not that much to say about something you like. You can kind of say 'I really like that band' and then if you're forced to fill up the rest of an article, you've got to start saying heady things. It's much easier to say negative things in a review.
Writin songs is like a mystery. The most difficult thing to do is have a good idea. If you have a decent idea, the songs are the easy part. Actually having something to say is the hard part. If you get an idea for a song, then it pulls you along. There are just some ideas that you get that are really hard to edit out; it's hard to stop thinking about some bad ideas. So you just finish it and you end up putting it on a record.
You have to learn to say no not just to things you don't want to do, you have to say no to things that you want to do, things that are good to do. You have to realize that every time you say yes to one thing you've got to take something else off the plate. Critically, I think you have to realize that it's easier to say no than to say maybe.
It came down to the smallest things, really, that a person could do to say I’m sorry, to say it’s okay, to say I forgive you. The tiniest of declarations that built, one on top of the other, until there was something solid beneath your feet. And then… and then. Who knew?
Some people say the things I do are annoying because I'm intentionally trying too hard to be relatable, but I'm really not. It's never really been my intention; I've never gone out of my way to be relatable to anyone. I just say what I want, and I'm pretty blunt about things.
I'm just flowing through, when I see things, I talk about 'em. And it's cool. I don't want any title. I just say what I say, and hopefully somebody gets it. I'm not perfect, and I'm just here and trying to make a dollar, and being real at the same time.
At times we're going to get angry. Anger is an emotion God built into us. But we don't have to blow up and say hurtful things that are going to damage our relationships. Learn to take a step back, collect your thoughts, and think about what you want to say.
Opportunities may come along for you to convert something -something that exists into something that didn't yet. That might be the beginning of it. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain. It's not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It's not that easy. You want to write songs that are bigger than life. You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen. You have to know and understand something and then go past the vernacular.
We built a business for ourselves just out of hard work, and I think people really want to hear from us about that.
I just have so much fun playing bad girl roles. Getting to say things that in life you would never ordinarily say, there's something really liberating about that. It's fun.
Yes, I'm a 'Twi-hard.' I became obsessed. Absolutely obsessed. I didn't watch television, I didn't go to the cinema. My friends would ring and say: 'What are you doing?' And I would say: 'I've just got to finish this chapter.'
If I hear Anna say something, and I completely misheard her say it, and she goes, 'That's not what I said, but that's a great idea.' Whose idea was it? It was nobody's idea. It came out of thin air, but it was a misunderstanding. That's really what's fun about having a partner to throw ideas off of. Sometimes you get those good accidents.
As soon as you start to think of that thing that you want to convey or say, you can always just say it much better than you can actually rhyme it or stuff it into a song. It's very, very difficult to just kind of get your point across without going the back way. And you have to be good at that, to not think about things so hard. Let the pen take over, so that it's somebody else's job to dissect the lyrics and tell you what you're all about.
My mother used to say, "Tell your brain you want that piece of information or you want to solve this problem, and then just walk away from it. Just forget about it. Just do something else, completely distract yourself, and you'll see, it's like a computer. Eventually, it will deliver it up." And I find that's really true.
I want to see my family prosper, see my kids grow old. I would love to keep having a really solid, strong career and just being happy. My life isn't just this business, so there's so many other things that I like to do. I just want to be able to have the freedom to do all of the things that I want to do.
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