Jason Isbell, "There just can't be more of them than of us"...

Interviewer (Sam Jones): “By nature, you have to examine things more closely than the
average human being walking down the street and the gift from artists (like yourself) is that through this examination they can reflect humanity back at us… you can learn to be more empathetic or more understanding of the human psyche by the fact that you try to write really lean song about it?” 

Jason Isbell: 

“… no, no, I think you are exactly right. That is why you should listen to good music and not listen to bad music. When I get angry about something being widely consumed and hugely successful that I think really sucks because it is so formulaic and corporate and bad.

That’s why it makes me mad and say we are all fine listening to whatever we want to listen to because I do think that there are some kinds of art that make you a better person. Whether you are consuming it or trying to create it, I think It helps you to build a better understanding of what other people are like inside themselves. 

Good music reminds you more of your similarities rather than your differences. And I think bad art reminds you so much of your differences… because you begin thinking, ‘I am not connecting with them. I am not because they are singing about things that I don’t care about but there are people out there who must care about it because they have sold 10 million records!’, so suddenly you begin to feel alienated.

There can’t be more of them than us. There is frustration there, but it is a question because I am not saying there are more of us than them. There just can’t be more of them than of us. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe there are…”

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

“Culture is what this country needs. Culture brings something from within outwards. Education takes something and tries to stick it on from the outside. Education tries to tell you, culture shows you,” Frank Lloyd Wright. 

(Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures, 532 of which were completed; 1867-1959.)

KATHARINE HEPBURN

"Well, it's not enough to be talented. There's a lot of talent out there, but it's owned by lazy, stupid, or essentially boring people. You can't just be talented: You have to be terribly smart and energetic and ruthless. You also have to become necessary to people, by working hard and well and bringing more than your bones and your skin to the project. Don't just show up. Transform the work, yourself, and everybody around you. Be needed. Be interesting. Be something no one else can be--and consistently,” Katharine Hepburn. 

(Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress. Known for her fierce independence and spirited personality, Hepburn was a leading lady in Hollywood for more than 60 years; 1907-2003).

JOHN FOWLES

"Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because they imagine it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them. In it they can reduce women to the status of objects. That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see relationship between objects. Whether the objects love each other, need each other, match each other. It is an extra dimension of feeling we men are without and one that makes war abhorrent to all real women - and absurd. I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our fellow-men. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness. To death," John Fowles, 'The Magus'.

(John Robert Fowles was an English novelist of international stature, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work reflects the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, among others; 1926-2005).