Rob Spillman > Quotes

“If I’m free, it’s because I’m always running.” —Jimi Hendrix Soundtrack:”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“Gray is to Berliners what white is to Eskimos and red is to the Maori.”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“I was possessed by what the Germans call Sehnsucht, one of those wonderfully untranslatable words that combines longing and nostalgia for a home that one doesn’t even know is one’s home.”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“I am nowhere. I am home.”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“Hank was full of absolutes, pronouncements like “Art has no utility” and “Warhol is irrelevant.”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“I have no memories of my parents being together. They separated six months before the concert at which my father was booed. It is hard for me to imagine them as a couple.”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“How easy it is to upend your life. To restless, heedless me it was nothing.”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“I thought of James Baldwin, retreating to Paris in order to catch his breath and be stronger in his fight against oppression back home. I wanted to stomp the earth and leave giant footprints. What is the point of living if you don’t leave your mark?”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“Our friend Hank, however, had no such attachments. A painter from Ohio, he wasn’t caught in the New York circular hell of subsistence living,”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“Even with my limited self-awareness,”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“Once again I distrusted happiness, mistaking it for complacency.”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“For me, this wasn’t a big leap—our fleeing known New York for the uncertainty of life in Europe was within the continuum of leaps I had been making my entire life.”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“THE SUMMER OF 1972, I watched TV for the first time. The Munich Olympics were broadcast around the clock and I loved its opera-worthy spectacle and drama.”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“We embraced the second two affirmations. “I am good at art, I am learning” became the final words to any argument, the punch line of any joke, and our collective mantra.”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“Of course I’m going to jump into the abyss. That’s what I do—throw myself into the unknown.”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“I didn’t think of myself as American or German, but as a little of both. I didn’t speak only German or only English, but used whatever words worked best for the situation.”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir

“While I threw myself into any social situation, could put on any mask—punk, preppy, artist—I also put masks on everyone I met, instantly judging them. I inhabited my masks, adopted the personas. Perhaps it was self-preservation, and stemmed from my itinerant childhood, which had forced me to form friendships quickly, potential allies or foes judged in an instant.”
― Rob Spillman, All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir