Jack White Quotes

"I consider music to be storytelling, melody and rhythm. A lot of hip-hop has broken music down. There are no instruments and no songwriting. So you're left with just storytelling and rhythm. And the storytelling can be so braggadocious, you're just left with rhythm."

"Vinyl is the real deal. I've always felt like, until you buy the vinyl record, you don't really own the album. And it's not just me or a little pet thing or some kind of retro romantic thing from the past. It is still alive."

"I think that sometimes love gets in the way of itself - you know, love interrupts itself. We want things so much that we sabotage them."

"I'd make a White Stripes record right now. I'd be in the White Stripes for the rest of my life. That band is the most challenging, important, fulfilling thing ever to happen to me. I wish it was still here. It's something I really, really miss."

"My mother was 45 when she had me, so when I was in high school my parents were the same age as my friends' grandparents."

"I keep guitars that are, you know, the neck's a little bit bent and it's a little bit out of tune. I want to work and battle it and conquer it and make it express whatever attitude I have at that moment. I want it to be a struggle."

"I have so much music inside me I'm just trying to stay afloat. I don't tend to write for a particular band - you have to just write the songs and then let God into the room and let the music tell you what to do."

"We have a secret project at Third Man where we want to have the first vinyl record played in outer space. We want to launch a balloon that carries a vinyl record player."

"Playing drums feels like coming home for me. Even during the White Stripes I thought: 'I'll do this for now, but I'm really a drummer.' That's what I'll put on my passport application."

"I won't join another band again."

"A lot of people in the media, and some everyday people, really aren't in search of the truth. They're in search of something worse than that. Money, yeah. I think the media's the kind of a thing where the truth doesn't win, because it's no fun. The truth's no fun."

"I just think old old movies, they make you concentrate and pay attention so much more. They feel so warm. A lot of modern digital videotape, it's just too bright. Don't know why, it's not warm."

"I want to be part of the resurgence of things that are tangible, beautiful and soulful, rather than just give in to the digital age. But when I talk to people about this they just say, 'Yeah, I know what you mean,' and stare at their mobiles."

"If you have twenty guys in the room and you just bring in one girl, you change the entire mood and everyone plays different."

"With the White Stripes we were trying to trick people into not realising we were playing the blues. We did not want to come off like white kids trying to play black music from 100 years ago so a great way to distract them was by dressing in red, white and black."

"I think you can't really escape any kind of spiritual education as a child, whether it's New Age or Judaism or Buddhism or whatever it is. You can't escape it, even if you completely disagree with it, you still have it as a foundation that you base things off of."

"There aren't that many things left that haven't already been done, especially with music. I'm interested in ideas that can shake us all up."

"I was in a Montessori school. There was a drum circle with all the kids passing around a little bongo drum. I was the last person in the circle, and when it got to me I played 'Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits' - in front of all the parents. Blew the crowd away at five years old."

"Nowadays, everybody assumes, when they wake up in the morning, if they have a question, it will get answered. Because they have the internet. No matter what the question is, someone will answer their question."

"It is a myth that art has to be sold. It is not like stocking a grocery store where people fill a pushcart. Art is a product that has no apparent need. The salesperson builds the need in the mind of the buyer."

"If you want to put out a million CDs and sell them and get them played on the radio, and even videos, or whatever, if that still exists, that kind of muscle can only come from a label like Columbia."

"I grew up in the 90s in the time of grunge when if you didn't go on stage in jeans and a T shirt you weren't 'real.' That seemed ridiculous to me."

"I've always felt it's ridiculous to say, of any of the females in my life: You're my friend, you're my wife, you're my girlfriend, you're my co-worker. This is your box, and you're not allowed to stray outside of it."

"I would never purposely sing a song about someone I love, I wouldn't want to embarrass them. But for someone I don't like... I would definitely do that."

"I really don't like to take the easy way out, if I can help it, on anything I do, I like to really make it a challenge. I don't know how to create by taking the easy routes. I've tried, you know, I've tried to let myself, but I always struggle to compensate."

"There's Catholic guilt about things, then there's the guilt of being the youngest of 10, so when nice things happen to you, you're not really allowed to enjoy them."

"I think the sensitivity that you need to create certain things sometimes would spill over into things that shouldn't have bothered me."

"I think it takes a lot of trickery to keep up with the media and its perception of you. I don't know if I have it in me most of the time to care. The music is made first, and the interviews or photos to keep it alive come later as a necessary evil, I suppose."

"My mother's the youngest of 10 children too, so we have sort of a special bond in that we know what that feels like. It's a strange spot to be in."

"I didn't really even think of recording under my own name for a long time. I thought, 'I've got the rest of my life to do that.'"