August and Everything After (1993)

• Step out the front door like a ghost
  into the fog where no one notices
  the contrast of white on white.
  And in between the moon and you
  the angels get a better view
  of the crumbling difference between wrong and right.
  • Round Here

• Says she's close to understanding Jesus
  She knows she's more that just a little misunderstood
  She has trouble acting normal when she's nervous
  Round here we're carving out our names
  Round here we all look the same
  Round here we talk just like lions
  But we sacrifice like lambs
  • Round Here

• Then she looks up at the building
  and says she's thinking of jumping.
  She says she's tired of life;
  she must be tired of something.
  • Round Here

• Omaha Somewhere in middle America
  Get right to the heart of matters
  It's the heart that matters more
  I think you better turn your ticket in
  And get your money back at the door
  • Omaha

• We all want something beautiful.
  I wish I was beautiful
  • Mr. Jones

• Mr. Jones and me tell each other fairy tales
  Stare at the beautiful women
  "She's looking at you. Ah, no, no, she's looking at me."
  Smiling in the bright lights
  Coming through in stereo
  When everybody loves you, you can never be lonely
  • Mr. Jones

• I want to be a lion
  Everybody wants to pass as cats
  We all want to be big big stars, but we got different reasons for that
  Believe in me because I don't believe in anything
  and I want to be someone to believe
  • Mr. Jones

• Mr. Jones and me staring at the video
  When I look at the television, I want to see me staring right back at me
  We all want to be big stars, but we don't know why and we don't know how
  But when everybody loves me, I'm going to be just about as happy as can be
  Mr. Jones and me, we're gonna be big stars....
  • Mr. Jones

• Believe in me, help me believe in anything, I want to be someone who believes"
• Mr.Jones

• It does not bother me to say this isn't love
  Because if you don't want to talk about it then it isn't love
  And I guess I'm going to have to live with that
  But I'm sure there's something in a shade of grey,
  Something in between,
  And I can always change my name
  If that's what you mean
  • Anna Begins

• Every time she sneezes I believe it's love
  • Anna Begins

• When I think of heaven
  (Deliver me in a black-winged bird)
  I think of flying down into a sea of pens and feathers
  and all other instruments of faith and sex and God
  In the belly of a black-winged bird
  Don't try to feed me
  I've been here before and I deserve a little more
  • Rain King

• I belong in the service of the Queen
  I belong anywhere but in between
  She's been crying, I've been thinking
  And I am the Rain King
  • Rain King

• These train conversations are passing me by
  I don't have nothin' to say
  You get what you pay for, but I just had no
  Intention of living this way
  • Raining in Baltimore

• I dreamt i saw you walking, on a hillside in the snow. castings shadows on the winter sky; as you stood there counting crows.
  • A Murder of One

Recovering the Satellites (1996)

• All my sins...
  I said that I would pay for them
  if I could come back to you
  All my innocence is wasted on
  the dead and dreaming
  I dream of Michelangelo
  when I'm lying in my bed
  Little angels hang above my head
  and read me like an open book
  • Angels of the Silences

• Waiting for the moon to come
  and light me up inside
  And I am waiting for the telephone
  to tell me I'm alive
  • Daylight Fading

• Daylight fading
  Come and waste another year
  All the the anger and the eloquence
  are bleeding into fear
  Moonlight creeping
  around the corners of our lawn
  When we see the early signs
  that daylight's fading, we leave just before it's gone
  • Daylight Fading

• I will wait for you in Baton Rouge
  I'll miss you down in New Orleans
  I'll wait for you while she slips in something comfortable
  And I'll miss you when I'm slipping in between
  If you wrap yourself in daffodils
  I will wrap myself in pain
  And if you're the queen of california
  Baby I am the king of the rain
  And I say
  Goodnight Elisabeth
  • Goodnight Elisabeth

• A long December
  and there's reason to believe
  Maybe this year will be better than the last
  I can't remember
  the last thing that you said
  as you were leavin'
  Now the days go by so fast
  • A Long December

• The smell of hospitals in winter
  And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters,
  but no pearls
  All at once you look across a crowded room
  To see the way that light attaches to a girl
  And it's one more day up in the canyons
  And it's one more night in Hollywood
  If you think you might come to California...
  I think you should
  • A Long December

• Drove up to Hillside Manor
  sometime after two a.m.
  And talked a little while about the year
  I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
  Makes you talk a little lower
  about the things you could not show her
  And it's been a long December
  and there's reason to believe
  Maybe this year will be better than the last
  I can't remember all the times
  I tried to tell my myself to hold on to these moments as they pass
  • A Long December

• "I gotta rush away," she said,
  "I been to Boston before".
  and anyways
  this change I been feeling
  doesn't make the rain fall"
  No big differences these days
  just the same old walkaways
  and someday
  I'm gonna stay
  But not today
  • Walkaways

This Desert Life (1999)

• She sat right down on the sofa; I said,"Where have you been?
  I've been waiting for you.
  Cause last night I had something so good
  These days get so long and I got nothing to do
  I been hanginaround this town on the corner
  • Hanginaround

• We spend all day getting sober. Just hiding from daylight
  Watching TV
  We just look a lot better in the blue light
  Well, you know I gotta get out. But I'm stuck so tight
  Weighed by the chains that keep me...
  Hanginaround this town on the corner
  • Hanginaround

• Well I woke up in mid-afternoon cause that's when it all hurts the most
  I dream I never know anyone at the party and I'm always the host
  If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts
  You can never escape, you can only move south down the coast
  • Mrs. Potter's Lullaby

• Well, I am an idiot walking a tightrope of fortune and fame
  I am an acrobat swinging trapezes through circles of flame
  If you've never stared off in the distance, then your life is a shame
  And though I'll never forget your face, sometimes I can't remember my name
  • Mrs. Potter's Lullaby

• All the blue light reflections that color my mind when I sleep
  And the lovesick rejections that accompany the company I keep
  All the razor perceptions that cut just a little too deep
  Hey I can bleed as well as anyone, but I need someone to help me sleep
  • Mrs. Potter's Lullaby

• And all the lovesick rejections that accompany the company i keep.
  • Mrs. Potter's Lullaby

• And the price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings
  • Mrs. Potter's Lullaby

• I am covered in skin
  No one gets to come in
  Pull me out from inside
  I am folded and unfolded and unfolding
  I am colorblind
  Coffee black and egg white
  Pull me out from inside
  I am ready I am fine
  • Colorblind

• For all the things you're losing
  You might as well resign yourself to try and make a change
  I'm going down to Hollywood
  They're gonna make a movie from the things that they find crawling round my brain
  • I Wish I Was a Girl

Hard Candy (2002)

• On certain Sundays in November
  When the weather bothers me
  I empty drawers of other summers
  Where my shadows used to be
  And she is standing by the water
  As her smile begins to curl
  In this or any other summer
  She is something all together different
  Never just an ordinary girl
  • Hard Candy

• You put your girl up on a pedestal
  Then you wait for her to fall
  I put my summers back in a letter
  And I hide it from the world
  All the regrets you can't forget
  Are somehow pressed upon a picture
  In the face of such an ordinary girl
  And when you sleep you find your mother in the night
  • Hard Candy

• American girls, all weather & noise
  Playing the changes for all of the boys
  Holding a candle right up to my hand
  Making me feel so incredible
  If I made you cry, please tell me why
  Cause I'll try again if you let me try
  American girls all feathers & cream
  Come into bed so edible
  • American Girls

• The gentleman caller in the blue suede shoes
  He don't know what to do
  He just wants to look good for you
  So he rushes in to tell you what he did today
  but he can't think of what to say
  I think you listen anyway.
  He wants to have a good time just like everybody
  He doesn't want to fall apart
  You watch him as he stutters over what to say
  It's just a little game you play
  • Good Time

• Where’d you want to go to
  With nothing beside you
  But webbing and curfews and rain?
  And everything that hurts you
  Gets stuffed up inside you
  Like butterflies with wings
  And other perfect things
  • Butterfly in Reverse

• I got a friend at the New Frontier.
  And Galen, she said: "This is not America.
  You need a girl with electrical hair,
  And the word you wanted was 'Aluminum'.
  • New Frontier

• Got no place to go
  But there's a girl waiting for me down in Mexico
  She's got a bottle of tequila
  A bottle of gin
  And if I bring a little music I could fit right in
  • Holiday in Spain

• They left the television screaming that the radio's on
  • Holiday in Spain

Films About Ghosts (2003)

• Albert's always sincere, he's a sensitive type
  His intentions are clear, he wanna be well-liked
  If everything is nothing, then are we anything?
  Is it better to be better than to be anything?
  • Einstein on the Beach

• And all the king's men reappear
  For an eggman, falling, falling
  The world begins to disappear
  The worst things come from inside here
  And all the king's men reappear
  For an eggman, fallin' off the wall
  Will never be together again
  No never be together again
  No no never never never again, uh huh
  What you fear in the night in the day comes to call anyway
  • Einstein on the Beach

Adam Duritz

• I can write good songs. I can sing 'em, and I mean it, I mean it deeply, and I pour everything into that. Other than that, I suck.

• My life isn't necessarily more important than anyone else's: I'm just better in talking about it.

• There just is exponentially more money in the movie business than in the music business. As a result there are more people involved in the creative process.

• Truth is, you make albums, and some of those songs are hits, and some of the greatest hits albums have songs that weren't hits. You have a career, the reason why we're still around 10 years is that we do have successful songs.

• When so much money is involved in these movies, someone somewhere is going to try to screw you."

• Sometimes the world seems like a big hole. You spend all your life shouting down it and all you hear are echoes of some idiot yelling nonsense down a hole.

• All my songs are where I am.

• Art is just an expression, it's something you do because you need to express yourself. You take what's going on on the inside and put it on the outside, that's just who you are. I just write songs because I feel a certain way. When you've got a bunch of them, that's an album. They're all different.

• In LA, and also on tour, I've been isolated for too long. On stage you're the man, but other than that, there's nothing I like about being on tour. Thousands of people that worship you are nothing, compared to one evening with your friends. But it's my job: I'm a grown-up man, and I go to work.