Top 50 Bradford Cox Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “When I go on a nostalgia trip it’s not aesthetic. For me it’s about trying to recapture the smell or the feeling of something that I’ve experienced in the past personally.”

— Bradford Cox

2. “I like my solitude, and I’m a strong-willed person; I’m a very hard-to-be-around person sometimes, I guess.”

— Bradford Cox

3. “I’ve been going through some personal things that have stirred up a lot of old wounds.”

— Bradford Cox

4. “People say ‘I don’t want to die alone!’ But you know what, honestly? I don’t want to die with a bunch of people looking at me.”

— Bradford Cox

5. “That’s what culture is based on, the passing down of a certain narrative by imitation.”

— Bradford Cox

6. “For me, experimenting involves traditionalism.”

— Bradford Cox

7. “I always write the first and last song of an album first, and then the middle just kind of happens.”

— Bradford Cox

8. “You don’t need to drink if you have emotional problems.”

— Bradford Cox

9. “People roll their eyes and say, “Oh god, he’s not rich or famous.” I say it’s relative. I mean, look at me: I’m 115 pounds and I grew up without money. To me, I’m rich because I don’t have to worry about paying rent. I don’t think about money now.”

— Bradford Cox

10. “I’m tired of watching attractive people trying to be ugly, struggling for authenticity. Why not be yourself?”

— Bradford Cox

11. “The sober guy is always going to have this air of arrogance or self-righteousness, but it’s not my intention. I just knew that if I drank, I’d have a drinking problem.”

— Bradford Cox

12. “Everything I do is 100% automation, which means I’m just doing it live.”

— Bradford Cox

13. “I see a lot of people doing an “‘80s thing” who weren’t even born until the ’90s.”

— Bradford Cox

14. “I think people are intimidated by me, and I don’t know why. Sometimes even my own bandmates can be intimidated, or irritated, by me.”

— Bradford Cox

15. “I refuse to put myself into a situation in which I have to face some kind of “I’m losing it” kind of thing. I’m not “losing it”; it’s changed. What it is is changing.”

— Bradford Cox

16. “In reality, I’ve probably got the lowest self-esteem of anybody I know, which has really been rubbed in my face lately in personal situations.”

— Bradford Cox

17. “I’ve been used for writing rhythm guitar chords for a long time because it’s so easy to play and chords just sound good on it.”

— Bradford Cox

18. “I don’t leave my room, and all I am surrounded by are guitars and equipment, y’know? It’s not always the best place to be.”

— Bradford Cox

19. “I want to satisfy the listener, exactly. I want to entertain the audience. I want the people to leave the show with the feeling I used to leave shows with when I was young, and I couldn’t get over it for another three or four days after it. I just kept reliving the set in my mind.”

— Bradford Cox

20. “I’ve got this thing where I always kind of diss the older stuff and favor the newer stuff. I mean, it’s not just my thing; every artist or musician is like that, I guess.”

— Bradford Cox

21. “The same people that always think I’m pretentious will think I’m pretentious, and the people who relate to me will continue to relate to me.”

— Bradford Cox

22. “I’m more into Neil Young and radical honesty.”

— Bradford Cox

23. “It was like I was asking for attention, but I didn’t really want attention.”

— Bradford Cox

24. “I know so many people think my music is quite influenced by Animal Collective, but honestly I think maybe the factor is that we’re both influenced by the same stuff.”

— Bradford Cox

25. “The Internet nowadays is all sensationalism, and it’s just terrifying when you’re actually experiencing it as a person.”

— Bradford Cox

26. “When I got hit by the car, I became depressed. As a result, I’ve been on antidepressants and I feel like I have no sexuality left. People complain about that side effect, but I love it. I feel outside of society.”

— Bradford Cox

27. “I’m working on one of the projects at a time and I’m the zone of that project. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this, and I might experiment with it in the future, but I’m not a fan of just random assemblages of songs at the moment.”

— Bradford Cox

28. “I need punk rock. It’s the medicine for me, but it’s bitter and sickening. If you don’t need it – if you’re happy and healthy – run toward that.”

— Bradford Cox

29. “Sometimes, I do have something to say, so I’ll sit there and I’ll write a song to someone – and then I just throw it away because it makes me cringe.”

— Bradford Cox

30. “I don’t have the capacity to write stuff consciously. When I do, it’s really awful.”

— Bradford Cox

31. “I don’t like the sound of my own voice. And, for people I don’t know, their impression of me is what they read on the internet, and they’re so far off a lot of the time.”

— Bradford Cox

32. “When young groups put out albums, they’re always forced to go through this cycle of touring and talking and flaunting and posturing and peacocking. Nobody makes me do that anymore.”

— Bradford Cox

33. “Unfortunately it’s hard for me to be a fanboy for anything these days just because I see so much music.”

— Bradford Cox

34. “I don’t think you should make music to make music, just to show that you can. That’s the opposite of vitality.”

— Bradford Cox

35. “Unlike the rest of everyone I hang around with, I don’t drink, so I remember what happened after shows. And I have never hit on anyone after a show, I’m not that kind of person. Even if I was attracted to someone, I’d be too shy.”

— Bradford Cox

36. “As a homosexual, my job is simply to sodomize mediocrity.”

— Bradford Cox

37. “If you’re not Jay-Z, a record leaking isn’t going to affect you.”

— Bradford Cox

38. “I have really low self-esteem, and it’s not easy for me to put myself on an album cover.”

— Bradford Cox

39. “Audiences tend to dig the earlier stuff by any given musician, and the artists themselves always tend to prefer the thing that they’re doing now.”

— Bradford Cox

40. “Talk to Arto Lindsay and I’m sure he’s tired of people asking him about DNA; he’s probably really into what he’s doing now, which is good stuff. I guess I probably feel like that. But I’m obviously not comparing myself to someone as iconic as that.”

— Bradford Cox

41. “When I started having a couple of beers and loosening up, I realized how many years I had wasted going back to my hotel room alone when I could have gone and just had a beer or two.”

— Bradford Cox

42. “It’s made me cynical at a young age to see how overlooked certain groups I’ve admired are.”

— Bradford Cox

43. “When money and fame happen too late, it’s like pouring kerosene over a fire of self-loathing.”

— Bradford Cox

44. “I’m a really friendly guy, I guess, and I really like meeting people.”

— Bradford Cox

45. “I used to be a lot more engaged on an improvisational level than other people. I was always on tour and always had a guitar in my hands, and when I went back home, my battery was at full charge. I had a lot of energy to get off, just impulses that I could draw upon.”

— Bradford Cox

46. “You’re always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that’s maybe even too weird for your own taste.”

— Bradford Cox

47. “I don’t have anything to prove.”

— Bradford Cox

48. “I’ve always been interested in writing from other people’s perspectives and other gender perspectives.”

— Bradford Cox

49. “We all come back to our little worlds.”

— Bradford Cox

50. “My entire education in music was in reading interviews with bands like Stereolab and finding out about Brazilian music or a Romanian composer. You expose yourself to what people you look up to admire.”

— Bradford Cox