Creativity Quote by Syd Barrett

There’s a quiet grenade tucked into Barrett’s phrasing: he frames his exit not as a collapse but as a correction. “I had written everything” is both boast and autopsy report, a reminder that early Pink Floyd ran on his imagination, then quickly became a place where his centrality was untenable. The second sentence lands with a shrug that’s almost cruel in its understatement. “Sort of” does heavy lifting - a softener that keeps the ego intact while pretending not to notice it. He doesn’t say the band got better, or worse. He says it got balanced, like an equation finally solved once the wild variable is removed.

The intent feels twofold: to reclaim authorship in a story that, by the time he’s being interviewed, has largely rewritten him as tragedy or cautionary tale; and to rationalize a departure that wasn’t cleanly chosen. “Evened things out” also signals a specific group dynamic: the shift from a band orbiting one mercurial songwriter to a more distributed power structure. Post-Barrett Floyd becomes architected - longer forms, shared writing, conceptual discipline. That doesn’t happen by accident; it happens because a charismatic mess at the center is replaced by consensus, systems, and a new kind of control.

The subtext is the most Barrett thing of all: a self-effacing line that still insists on the myth. He’s telling you he was the spark, and that removing the spark made the machine run.