i don't expect anyone else to feel that way.

"Anything can tell a story if you’re not at a party listening to a record. Jacques Brel tells a story specifically through his lyrics, but when I listen to John Coltrane that man tells me the story of his life just by playing what he plays. He tells me about Chicago and he tells me about New York and Harlem. He tells me about being a musician and he tells me all of his love just by what he plays. That’s how it is to my mind. I don’t expect anyone else to feel that way. I don’t think that you have to convey a story through words alone. In fact, words can be pretty inadequate because words which sound good in songs don’t always mean what you would want them to mean."

-tim buckley

it's such a pure expression or song from the soul

“Oh gosh, where do I start with the music? I mean, on so many levels, it has affected my life, and still continues to. 

I guess one example is that, to me, music, particularly the voice singing and songwriters, poets, like Dylan, or whoever, to me, it’s such a pure expression or song from the soul. It deeply connects to mine. It has always been a key that kind of unlocked, or enabled me to express anger, or pain of any sort. It’s always been a kind of wonderful excuse or a door for me, in terms of being able to express myself creative and personally.”

from an interview for i'm not there, 2007

i like things to be more universal

The thing is that I also like to have lyrics that are inclusive, that give you space to be inside them, to put your experience on to them, so that they can move through moments.

There's a way of writing where you just include all the streets around your house and all the people you meet. You actually name them autobiographically in the song.

Well, that song is very hard to travel through time. It may not last in its meaning. It may not touch every time because those people and events fade away and they may mean something to your life and your understanding of that life. 

I like things to be more universal.

It's a balance between... Obviously it's got to grab some skin from me.

I like the way that songs sort of have light, and sort of travel around despite you. It's good. It helps to have songs that you love, that you can be inside. It's good. It's part of the invention. On the outside of that you can say that I find great joy in the things that are sad. That's the way emotions are in people. They fall down on you and there's no way to get out, except to go through it. There's no way you can control it, there's no essay you can write to answer yourself out of it. It just soaks you like the rain. There's nothing you can do. Then it's gone and then another comes around. But tears are not all I deal with. I'll leave that to the next album.

jeff buckley

"Grace under Fire," by Toby Creswell Juice Magazine, February 1996, Issue 36

it's like a weird snake

I'm really into flying. I don't care about being a gospel singer or a blues singer per se, but elements of that music are keys to my subconscious. When I sing something like that--if I do it right--it's like a weird snake that will get in you and unlock something. If I wasn't able to do this, I think I would really lay down and die. 
Music comes from a very primal, twisted place. When a person sings, their body, their mouth, their eyes, their words, their voice says all these unspeakable things that you really can't explain but that mean something anyway. People are completely transformed when they sing; people look like that when they sing or when they make love. But it's a weird thing--at the end of the night I feel strange, because I feel I've told everybody all my secrets.

jeff buckley

art isn't separate-jeff buckley

An artist isn't separate from a person who isn't or doesn't feel they're an artist. There's artistry in human beings; it's just a human function. I find answers from music all the time. But because I most identify with music as a way of expressing myself, I just find most of my answers there. Other people find it through painting or art or teaching or murder. 

 I would be completely insane if I couldn't make music. Or I'd take up sculpture, and if I didn't have sculpture I'd take up screenplays, and if I didn't have that I'd take up something else. Anything artistic. But music seems to me to be the most closely identified with my soul. I mean, I feel that it's the best for me. It just gets into the bloodstream so quickly, for no reason at all. You can close your heart, and you can sleep even with your eyes closed, but you can never close your ears.