Creativity Quote by Roy Harper

Harper isn’t name-dropping poetry as a classy influence; he’s confessing to a bias he can’t, and won’t, unlearn. “I’m always going to give in that direction” reads like a musician admitting his compass points away from commerce and toward language, ambiguity, and the long game of art. The phrase “give in” matters: it suggests temptation and surrender, not a tidy creative choice. He’s describing an instinct that overrides strategy.

The subtext is the classic bargain for a songwriter who cares about words: poetry sharpens the blade, but it also makes you harder to market. Poets don’t optimize for hooks; they optimize for precision, mood, and the kind of internal logic that can feel unfriendly to radio, labels, and even audiences looking for easy catharsis. Harper’s career has lived in that friction. He’s been influential, revered by fellow musicians, and periodically sidelined by the machinery that rewards predictability. “It’s the making of me” acknowledges that the very thing that gives his work its authority - literate, uncompromising, emotionally strange in the best way - is the source of his identity.

“...and also the downfall of me” lands as a wry self-indictment, but also a quiet shot at an industry that treats lyric ambition like a bad business plan. He’s not asking for sympathy; he’s naming the cost. The line carries a musician’s version of fatalism: if you’re built to chase poems, you’ll keep choosing them, even when you know exactly how that choice can go wrong.