James Rhodes > Quotes

“music has, quite literally, saved my life and, I believe, the lives of countless others. It provides company when there is none, understanding where there is confusion, comfort where there is distress, and sheer, unpolluted energy where there is a hollow shell of brokenness and fatigue. And”
― James Rhodes, Instrumental

“It amazes me how many people love being unhappy.”
― James Rhodes, Instrumental

“La verdadera compasión nace cuando se entiende que lo que alguien percibe como la verdad es, a todos los efectos, la verdad. Da exactamente igual que esto sea manifiestamente incierto para ti y para todos los demás.”
― James Rhodes, Instrumental: A Memoir of Madness, Medication and Music

“How awful to have a passion so intense it dictates your every breath and yet to lack the moral backbone to pursue it. The”
― James Rhodes, Instrumental

“that’s the thing about music – we hear a piece of music and feel something. We hear the exact same piece of music at a different time and although the music is unchanged, our response is always slightly different.”
― James Rhodes, Instrumental

“Bach has taken us on a journey that we interpret and experience through our own memories, feelings and conditioning. You will respond differently from the way I do, and vice versa. That is the glory of music, especially music as immortal as this.”
― James Rhodes, Instrumental

“I sat there on that Wednesday evening in my pokey fucking living room, looked at myself on the TV screen being a massive, odious cunt, and realised that nothing has really changed. Deep down, like most of us, still now at the age of thirty-eight, I have this empty, black hole inside of me that nothing and no one seems capable of filling. I say like most of us because, well, look around you. Our society, our businesses, our social constructs, habits, pastimes, addictions and distractions are predicated on vast, endemic levels of emptiness and dissatisfaction. I call it self-hatred. I hate who I was, am and have become and, as we are taught to, I constantly chastise myself for the things I do and say. And such are the global levels of intolerance, greed, entitlement and dysfunction it is evidently not just confined to a small, wounded section of society. We are all in a world of pain. If it was ever any different way back in the past, it has, by now, most certainly become normalised. And I am as angry about that as I am about my own past. There is an anger that runs underneath everything, that fuels my life and feeds the animal inside me. And it is an anger that always, always prevents me, despite my best efforts, from becoming a better version of myself. My goddamn head seems to have a life of its own, quite beyond my control, incapable of reason, compassion or bargaining. It shouts at me from deep inside. As a kid the words didn’t make sense. As an adult it’s waiting at the end of my bed and starts talking an hour or two before I wake up so that when my eyes open it is in full-on rage mode, blaring this shit at me about how glad it is I’m finally awake, how fucked I am today, how there won’t be enough time, I’ll fuck everything up, my friends are plotting against me, trust no one, I must try as hard as I can to salvage everything in my life while knowing it’s already a lost cause. I’m exhausted all the time. It’s a kind of toxic ME – corrosive, pervasive, penetrative, negative, all the bad -ives.”
― James Rhodes, Instrumental

“Quiero que [mi hijo] conozca el secreto de la felicidad, algo tan sencillo que da la impresión de que por eso mucha gente no lo pilla. El truco consiste en dedicarte a hacer lo que quieras, lo que te haga feliz, siempre que no perjudiques a los que te rodean. No es hacer lo que crees que deberías. Ni lo que te parece que otros creen que deberías hacer, sino actuar de un modo que te procure una inmensa felicidad. Poder contestar con un "no" amable y educado a las cosas que no te gustan, alejarte de situaciones que no te ayudan a sentirte realizado, acercarte a aquello que te deleita. Y no hay nada que no esté dispuesto a hacer para contribuir a que mi hijo lo logre.”
― James Rhodes

“There is this peculiar twist inside me that forbids me to enjoy things that I like unless they are hidden.”
― James Rhodes, Instrumental

“Si pasas varias horas trabajando lenta y metódicamente, acabas interpretando las piezas de forma brillante y con una rapidez y seguridad mucho, mucho mayores que si te limitas a ensayar a lo bestia. (p. 110)”
― James Rhodes, Instrumental: A Memoir of Madness, Medication and Music

“A woman with the loveliest face imaginable was there. Open, kind, totally loving and non-judgmental.”
― James Rhodes, Instrumental: A Memoir of Madness, Medication, and Music