Creativity Quote by Donald Fagen

Fagen’s line lands like an offhand observation, but it’s really a diagnosis of how social life is engineered: not around truth, but around smoothness. “Usually” does a lot of work here. He isn’t romanticizing blunt honesty or declaring society hopeless; he’s pointing to a default setting, the quiet norm that most people self-censor most of the time. The fear isn’t just of conflict. It’s fear of being misread, of losing status, of puncturing the vibe and then being blamed for the mess.

Coming from Donald Fagen, it also reads as an artist’s credo. Steely Dan’s universe is full of characters performing cool while their inner lives leak out in side-glances and details: the con man’s sales pitch, the bored sophisticate’s cruel joke, the dreamer’s self-deception. Fagen has always been attuned to the gap between what people feel and what they can safely say. That gap is where his songs live: the glossy surface, the anxious undertow.

The subtext is less “speak your truth” than “notice the machinery.” People aren’t silent because they have nothing to say; they’re silent because modern life rewards the correct script. Jobs depend on it. Relationships depend on it. Even taste depends on it. Fear becomes a social lubricant, a way of keeping the room calm at the cost of personal clarity.

It’s a bleakly funny sentiment in Fagen’s hands, because it frames honesty not as a moral virtue but as a risky luxury. The line invites you to hear every conversation as partly staged - and to wonder what everyone is editing out.