Quotes by Rob Thomas

“Ever since I can remember, Ive always wanted to tell stories, but I never had the patience to sit down at a typewriter and write short stories or anything like that. I started writing songs as a way of communicating ideas the best way I could.”

“Were gonna do a song off the new record. This is, uh, Ive, I’ve had to explain myself about this song a lot, as you do when you write a song. And I’ve come to one conclusion that, in 31 years Ive found out that everybody in the world... everybody in the world is a little bit f****d up. Okay. And its okay, its okay. When youre young, you think its just you. Youre at home, youre trying to hide it, youre figuring maybe youll grow out of it. You know, maybe youll get like all the other people. What you dont know when youre young is that its everybody, man. Everybody is a little bit f****d up.And as you get older you have two kinds of people. You have the fortunate people who realise it early on, man. They let their freak flag fly. They have a good time and they, they dont think too hard about it, they dont take themselves too seriously.And then theres those poor bastards on the other side that are still trying to play it cool, man. Everyday. Im not f*****d up.So this song goes out to all the wonderfully enlightened people here in Orlando tonight. That know that its okay to be a little bit f****d up every now and then.[sings Unwell]”

“About midway through (last) year, we started having to think about the big mystery for season two.”

“I say, if youre going to bash us, just be clever.”

“Because weve spent so much time promoting the album, doing radio shows where you play one or two songs, and doing interviews, Im all about wanting to get on the road and just play.”

“I used to do lots of coke. ... Youd be tired and youd do it just to stay out and go to bars and meet girls and have a good time. ... Theres a two-year period at the beginning of this band that I dont even remember. I cant even imagine what the shows were like.”

“I like something with a classic touch. That way, its easy.”

“From the Ground Up”

“It sort of started with this idea of doing a teen noir show. The first-person, hard-boiled narrative is inherent in noir. I wanted her to sound like a 17-year-old female Raymond Chandler.”

“Were most pleased with it when its revelatory character stuff, when were getting her attitude and philosophy out of that voice-over. Ill even have her being deflecting and defensive within first-person narration. Shes a prickly girl.”

This is why you shouldn’t hire your friends. It’s all nice and professional until the insubordination starts. She sighed.

Its a noir world. Unfair things happen.

Her strategy for honoring the dead had always been to take action - solve the mystery, punish the criminal. But what did you do when there was no one to punish? When there were no answers to find? How do you assimilate that kind of loss without losing your mind?

Sometimes lightning struck twice; sometimes, one person got more than their share of suffering.

But sometimes the lies we let ourselves believe are for our own good.

Conan Doyle deluded a century of readers into thinking were all deductive geniuses.

Chatty, defensive, observant. My new favorite witness.

I also drink Scotch. But Im not picky. Ill take the victory Scotch, or the Scotch of defeat. Or the rotgut swill.

Look, this is helping me out quite a bit, but could you just get to the punishment part? Were at the end of World War Two in history, and I cant wait to find out who wins.

Reading Youth in Revolt might have ruined my career because suddenly I wanted to abandon all the emotional truth of something and just go out far on a literary limb with completely implausible things that relied completely on voice and humor. And what saved me is realizing that I couldnt do that very well.