Ben Folds People Quotations

I'm older than I was, and I'm still washed-up, and I haven't changed my music one iota. It's just much easier to do this when people are being nice to you.

My idea is to play with the people who you know want to get it right. Then it's fun and easy to record, and you can get down to details, like taking out cymbals so the verse doesn't dwarf the chorus, something like that.

I'm not really a strange person or anything, so if there's music I like, usually there's other people who like it too.

I'm romantically inclined. No human being on Earth is not attracted to other people. There is no fairy tale that they only have eyes for you. You just choose to act on it or not.

If I'm in a relationship and my girlfriend is sleeping with other people, I don't need to know who it is; I just want to know how she feels about it.

I divorce myself from listeners who aren't tolerant of humor. I did notice universally that, especially when it comes to weight, people look in the mirror and get the angle just right, tell themselves it's all right, and then they go out.

I want people to listen to my lyrics and be okay with themselves. The people who have it the roughest are homosexuals who come out of the closet.

I think people use temp music quite a bit, but the people who write the temp music don't ever really learn that their music was inspiring a movie.

You can't really control how people hear stuff. It's hard to remember that. I have to let go of it.

White people don't sing together very often, and when they do, it's about the celebrity of the song. The singing at my shows is all about harmony.

I'm definitely an anomaly, but I'm making things. They're selling, say, martinis, and I'm kind of making vintage Riesling. People aren't going to sit there very often, not your average public, and your average music-business monster is not going to take the time to notice the overtones and the undertones inside the flavor. They'd rather just have the martini.

People learn at the rate they are going to learn.

I was pretty much a dork growing up. Going up in front of a crowd and being an idiot was a relief when I was a kid. But talking to two or three people at once and being myself was impossible. And being myself while singing a song was more than impossible; I would've rather died. I get really nervous and tend to want to be an idiot.

People rush around in the summer to try and find like-minded musicians to put together. Packages are all the rage. I prefer keeping it smaller, having a tour that's manageable -- both for me and the audience -- and Rufus and I go together in certain ways. We're both out of step with any kind of music scene. We don't really fit in anywhere. I think we feel similarly disenfranchised -- in a good way. Also, I can listen to Rufus every night. That's important.