Okkervil River quotes

So come back and we'll take them all on. So come back to your life on the lam. So come back to your old black sheep man. He says, "I am waiting on hoof and on hand. I am waiting, all hated and damned. I am waiting - I snort and I stamp. I am waiting, you know that I am, calmly waiting to make you my lamb."

The house in the valley is open this week.
Imagine the sea looking in
at the slowly moving sheets.
Honestly.

There is no escaping the thing that is making its home in your radio.

Look, though, I don't know what notes you want to hear played, I can't think what lines you'd like me to sing or say, and I'm not sure what subjects you want mentioned. So pause and add your own intentions.

And I think I believe that, if stones could dream, they'd dream of being laid side-by-side, piece-by-piece, and turned into a castle for some towering queen they're unable to know. And when that queen's daughter came of age, I think she'd be lovely and stubborn and brave, and suitors would journey from kingdoms away to make themselves known. And I think that I know the bitter dismay of a lover who brought fresh bouquets every day when she turned him away to remember some knave who once gave just one rose, one day, years ago.

And I really do think that there’s probably more good than anger or selfishness, sickness, or sadness would ever completely allow us to have in this life, I think I'm sure. But that doesn't mean it's bad.

Kids get lost, lambs out wandering. Bigger, blacker things go following them into a patch of forest somebody once planted for this song. (It's not over. Phones are still ringing. Eyes are still rolling, eyes are still clinging. Something in the air starts singing...Radios switched on and buzzing. Something in the wind starts humming. Something in the field starts hunting...) Kids grow up and kids go numb. And, kids, it's coming. Kids, it's going to come.

Some nights I thirst for real blood, for real knives, for real cries. And then the flash of steel from real guns in real life really fills my mind.

I've got my ear against the screen, I feel your feelings crackling through every single inch of me; I'm going to make you mean it. With every single cell of me, I'm going to make you mean the words you sigh.

A black sheep boy dissolves in hot cream, in sweet moans, in each dead bed and empty home, in each seething bacterium. Killing softly and serial, he lifts his head, handsome, horned, magisterial. He's the smell of the moonlight wisteria. He’s the thrill of the abecedarian. (See the muddy hoofprints where he carried you?) And there’s plenty of ways to claim his crimes tonight, and there's plenty of things to do on his dime. And there's plenty of ways to wear his hide tonight. You've got yours and I've got mine. So why did you flee? Don't you know you can’t leave his control, only call all his wild works your own?

So hoist up the John B. sail. See how the main sail sets. I'm full in my heart and my head and I want to go home, with a book in each hand, in the way I had planned. I feel so broke up, I want to go home.

Now, with all these cameras focused on my face,
You'd think they could see it through my skin.
They're looking for evil, thinking they can trace it,
But evil don't look like anything.

But if I could tear his throat, and spill his blood between my jaws, and erase his name out for good, don't you know that I would? Don't you realize that I wouldn’t pause, that I would cut him down with my claws if I could have somehow never let that happen? Or I'd call, some black midnight, fuck up his new life where they don't know what he did, tell his brand-new wife and his second kid.

All of the stage names evaporate, and it's just a blood-flushed and heart-rushing race; either to kick off too soon or stick round too late, to be far too dear or too cut-rate.

I live in a building where nobody knows me,
I go to bed early, I sleep in my clothes.
At night I hear screaming down in the street,
I dream that I'm slipping, I reach for my feet.

There's nothing quite like the blinding light when that curtain's cast aside.

Feel a brand-new storm surround your form tonight...

Bless this tiny alley; we have fallen, from tall buildings we have fallen through the air into a garden sweetly smelling of the softest sleeping flowers (now they sit under the sidewalk, now they're waiting for the shining of some future sun to show us all that brings you beauty and all that gives you pleasure); I could sigh into your hide and say "I hope I'm here forever, but black sheep boy - with your lovers, with your list of favorite pillows, with your list of missing children, with the walls where you drew windows overlooking hidden gardens cut apart by jagged mountains (climbing up into the air and crumbling down into a fountain where the water waits forever, like a quiet, distant treasure) - when you rise up to recover, when you leave this tiny alley, when you meet me in the garden with your horns all hung with cedar, every spirit brushing past me brushing past them in the ether screams 'all this is window dressing, all you are is flimsy curtains - watch, you flame up with a word from us and don't know that you're burning."

By the second verse, dear friends, my head will burst and my life will end, so I'd like to start this one off by saying "live! and love!"

How did I climb out of a life so boring into that moment? Please stop ignoring the heart inside, oh you readers at home! While you gasp at my bloody crimes, please take the time to make your heart my home: where I'm forgiven by time, where I'm cushioned by hope, where I'm numbed by long drives, where I'm talked off or doped. Does the heart wants to atone? Oh, I believe that it’s so, because if I could climb back through time, I'd restore their lives and then give back my own: tens of times now its size on a far distant road in a far distant time where every night I'm still crying, entirely alone.