Pj harvey quotes

Everything from a lifetime's worth of collecting things. You know as we go through life, and something stays and ends up on your shelf and lives there until you die? Just those little things.

I make tiny wooden people with bits of hair. Puppets and things like that.

Well, I don't really concern myself too much with what other people make of my work.

I feel like "Not For Long" was one for me just because I got to work with two people that I looked up to...

In the same way, I write some of my more difficult pieces when I'm at very happy stages in my life.

Most of the stuff that I do talk about, about being counted out and being an underdog, 'cause that's what I feel like I am.

My mom is a sculptress.

I feel like the actual, the most beautiful thing about a song is that it is something that goes out there in the universe and people use it in the way that they need it in their lives.

My father is actually a quarry man - he deals in stone. He also at one point had a lot of sheep, he owned a sheep farm, but primarily the family business was in stone.

I don't like things to be handed to me on a plate; that means nothing. I like to go through layers of unraveling and every time I listen to something, it makes me feel something different. Now I'm aware of the conflict that's going on, but at the time I just let what was happening happen.

I think I'm a maker of songs, and songs are like films or a picture: You put them over there, and they have nothing to do with you.

My town was even smaller. Only six hundred people. We didn't have a grocery store.

I tried to use words that were dealing with the emotional quality that any human being could recognize in the way that they felt about their country. It's to do with the world we live in. That world is a brutal one and full of war. It's also full of many wonderful things and love and hope

The way I make music is unique to myself and the way I have lived my life - no one else would tell that story in the same way that I do.

I just started writing and writing for people. And then, like I guess after (a) year of getting some placements, I kinda got a shot to be an artist. Long story short I think, yeah.

In college, I thought I wanted to be solely an artist, and then when I got here, to college, I was like, "Okay, well I want to be a songwriter," 'cause it was like close to Nashville.

We just kind of lost our way. But we were looking to be free. One day we'll float. Take life as it comes.

I try to see as much dance, theatre and films as I can because all of it feeds me in a way that I need feeding for what I do.

It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent. Therefore I keep reaching for instruments I don't particularly know how to play, and then I become excited. That gives me energy to want to make new things, and it forces me to hear things in new ways, which then can only help to say things in a new way.

Ever since time began: What song is not about love? Whether it's about love from man to woman or parent to child, or grandmother to granddaughter... It just goes on and on. Or whether it's the love of one's country.

With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song.

I've been so used to being supported by musicians, and I don't class myself as a particularly adept musician on instruments. I think I'm a songwriter.

I think that's always very valuable: to keep the mind open to receiving all sorts of information, which can then be used in my work, but also just as a human being.

I'd want to read the stories that I'd written, I'd want to show the drawings that I made. That was just purely natural. So I knew I wanted to go into the arts in some way and that I'd want to show that work in some way.

I've so much left to explore, it's enormously exciting to me. It's a passion. I just try and get better at what I do, and I study it very hard, like it is my life degree.

I long ago learned that you can't expect people to interpret the songs in the way they had meant for you, as the writer.

I'm finding that writing poetry is strengthening my songwriting, because you're learning to make a piece of writing work on a page with nothing else. I was also finding within poetry I felt a lot more free to write about very different matters, to write about social issues or things that are going on around me.

I feel like I make a soundtrack for the come up, and I feel like there's so many people that's trying to figure out how to chase their dreams, or that are in the process of chasing their dreams, so they connect with that. And then being a singer, you don't really get to touch on nothing either.

I like to be around things that I find inspiring.

I've always been very interested in the visual aspect of what I do.

In the past members of my family on both my mother's and father's side have fought in the war, in the first and second World Wars. Unfortunately, they're dead and I wasn't able to speak to them, but that was in our family history too.

I've always been very politically interested from a very young age and I hadn't felt that was something I could begin to bring into my songwriting because I hadn't felt I'd reached the stage, that I had the skill with language enough, yet, to do that.

What we are fed through the media I do not accept, unless you see it with your own eyes you cant trust anything.

I really don't pay too much attention; I don't go out of my way to read any interviews.

You shouldn't separate the piece from the way it's intended. I always feel like words shouldn't be unraveled from the music. They're all linked so much together.

You can sing a very aggressive word in such a way that it's very funny. You can change words, completely turn them around on their head so that they mean exactly the opposite of what they are written down. There are endless possibilities which I think Diamanda Galás is doing already. She turns everything upside down by the way she sings it. She makes you feel nauseous or horrified or ridiculous just by her voice. I think that's an incredible power.

I'm finding my way, and I make mistakes.

I come from an art-school background, and I still feel that in my music, it's about exploration and challenging myself, about putting myself in a place that's frightening because I haven't been there before.

I also like a lot of silence, and when you're touring, it's constantly noise, all the time, you're surrounded with 15 or 20 people the entire time. I find that tough.

There's so much you can do with laying words on a bed of music. You can completely change their meaning with the type of music or the way they're sung.

I find it hard myself to feel justified to sing in a very politically direct way about war or social conditions because I feel so ignorant of a lot of it.

I'm probably much more influenced by film-makers and painters than I am by other songwriters or poets.

As far as in my adult life, it kinda started (with) writing first 'cause I went to school in Nashville. I mean, not Nashville but close to Nashville, and I met my managers in L.A. at a convention randomly. And then, it kinda just started from there. And then, I got my publishing deal.

I would never feel confident enough to express my views and opinions as the right ones because I just don't think that's possible. There are so many sides to everything that nobody is right or wrong.

Ideas for songs can come from something as simple as a photograph and letting my imagination run wild on an old photograph that I found, or to a film that I have seen or to just most of the time, just daily walking through life and keeping your eyes open.

Any of these contemporary war situations, whether civilian or soldier on either side - that's what I was interested in. The people who are being affected. Not so much the political speak at the top of the food chain, but the people who are affected by it on the ground.

Making me into a role model is placing too much importance on what I see as a work in progress.

People want to build musicians into mythical beings.

To think of myself as a role model is extremely flattering, but I could never accept that, because Im just learning like everybody else.

It varies, I don't think there is any one set way of writing songs or coming up with ideas, it comes in so many ways you know.

If I ever meet a writer or a painter, I don't presuppose that they are like the work they are presenting.

Some things lend themselves well to songs, some things don't, and I'm learning that a lot at the moment. It's still a relatively new way of writing. It's only really the last five to 10 years that I've taken my writing seriously in this way, as something I can keep working toward. I think I feel myself much more before as simply a songwriter.

If you want to be good at anything, you have to work hard at it. It doesn't just fall from the sky. I work every day at trying to improve my writing, and I really enjoy it. Nothing fascinates me more than putting words together, and seeing how a collection of words can produce quite a profound effect.

I feel like I'm being put inside a box, and I'm not necessarily getting a chance. Like I'm not getting the shot that I deserve. So that's what Rare is about 'cause I feel because I am the way that I am, and I don't necessarily fit the mold of a lot of different artists that's out, it's like I'm not getting the chance to show what I can do. So, that's basically all the frustration of that, and everything is pretty much Rare for me anyway.

I think it does surprise me a bit when people have a very fixed idea of what I'm like, based upon the work that I do, which is something that is very separate.

I think a lot of people have an idealistic view - if you grow up in the country, there can't possibly be anything wrong with you.

The first song I heard from me was Meek Mill ["I Don't Know"], it was his first single before he went (to jail). I remember the first time I heard it was like eleven thirty at night, and I was like, "Yo, this is crazy!" And, I was smiling from ear to ear.

There is a thread connecting you no matter how far away you are from someone and you know I have two or three relationships in my life that are like that.

Folk music was to strengthen and unify people, whether it was through an uprising and rebellion or whether is was through hard work, bringing in crops. But it was to strengthen each other and that's still what music is about today.

I grab an instrument to make my body a song, but I'm not a player as such, maybe a little more on guitar, but certainly not piano.

I do take enormous interest in what's going on. I try to see whatever I can, whenever I can.

I studied art just short of the level where you can earn a degree.

I think of myself as a songwriter, a weaver of story and imagination in a way that a novelist might write a book.

I feel that my dreamscapes are part of my everyday life, and sometimes I can't tell the difference.

The craft, the writing of a song, is about creating a story, a life story, a world within three minutes, but that's the frame, if you like, the picture frame. That fascinates me.

I feel like when I'm writing for other people, when I'm doing rap hooks, it's kinda like playing dress up for me...

If you come at the record feeling really happy and optimistic, it can be incredibly beautiful and uplifting, and if you come at it in a bleak moment, it can feel like a very dark place to share. It's all down to the listener.

The artists that I love- whether painters or filmmakers- it's because something resonates in me because I've felt it.

Writing is something that I practice at every day to get better at.

I feel like it's very important that I'm doing what I'm doing, and I want to keep honoring that and try and do it as honestly as I can.

There is nothing more boring than doing singing exercises.

I'm a visual artist myself and always have been so it's very natural for me to be very concerned with presentation, whether it's artwork or onstage.

When I was young, I had idols that I thought were wonderful. I wanted to be just like them.

I have learnt through doing interviews throughout my life that the way that somebody can write about something can change entirely how it was meant, or what actually happened.

I didn't even know the industry of songwriting existed. I thought everybody sang songs and they were only singing the songs that they wrote. So after I found out about songwriting in college, I was like, "Okay, I want to do that."

Never settle for anything less than you want.

But even when I do give interviews, I always come across as such a completely different person. It seems like there's no controlling it anyway.

I am someone that follows the news and reads newspapers yet what do you believe and what don't you.

I think that most art is asking a question or is looking for something, looking for answers and that is what life seems to be about for most people.

Being a recording artist and having thousands of people listening to your music and singing your songs, and paying for it? It feels great!

I just love having no clothes on outside, and the only time to do that is when the sun's shining. It's a wonderful sensation to not have any clothes on.

Yeah, I mean I am somebody that makes an effort to go and see a lot of exhibitions, painting, drawing, sculpture.

I never feel that I have to adopt a character. It's more the way I choose to present the music and that's always based on what is right for the song.

You go back and look at some of the ancient writings that exist throughout the world about wars and it's the same; the human beings' articulation of events is the same. That really fascinated me.

Fly with me, touch the face of the true God. And then cry with joy at the depth of my love.

I do write a lot of prose. It's not disciplined enough yet that it's actually become stories, or short stories. The idea of writing a novel seems impossible.

When I write - I always write on my own - I demo those songs on a four-track.

I see men come and go, but there'll be one who'll collect my soul.

People have this idea of me being some kind of monster, and that's the complete opposite of who I am.

I'm not an autobiographical writer, but I am a writer who deals with human emotion on all levels.

I think blues music is music of the soul. Of course, there are other forms. You could call some classical music blues music in that way.

Well, I'm quite a self-deprecating person.

I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do, then I'm myself, and if I don't, then I give nothing.

If anything, I hope being an artist opens up more opportunities 'cause I feel there's a lot of things I could do, like musically and stylistic-wise that I can write, but I don't really have an avenue to show it 'cause most of the things I'm writing are in Hip Hop.

I think you have to be very careful getting the balance right if you're going to talk about grand themes like war, death and nationhood. You need to use the right language or don't do it at all.

You know, two people can say exactly the same words, saying the same story, and it would mean something entirely different.

I like things that are beaten up, that have lived a little. I like things that are real. I like things that are made out of wood or string. I never feel very responsive to plastic machinery.

It's good to feel excited by the environment you're in.

But huge photographs of dead bodies are slightly different. I couldn't find much humor there.

I'm always trying to swim to new ground.

When I'm writing for rappers it's kinda like switching, "Okay, you're not PJ. Now you have to act like a rapper."

The devil wanders into my soul.

I'm doing quite a lot of painting on stones - little funny fish and animals.

I don't think that much anymore in terms of 'write a record, record a record, tour a record,' because in my own mind, things have changed, in that I'm just an ongoing artist. I'm not quite sure what the next project needs to be until it presents himself, and then I know. I just follow dutifully while I'm being led.

Ive always been very visceral in that I feel things very deeply.

Shame is the shadow of love.

I think I just speak on what the regular people are going through outside of love 'cause, of course, there's always gonna be a love song, but there's so many other parts of life... being lost, feeling your way around, what you gonna do next.

I think I've been interested in music since I was little.

I knew what I didn't want to do- that's always my starting point. The starting point is always that I don't want to repeat myself. Or I try my best not to, with varying degrees of success.

I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. I have to work really hard at it to try and say the things I'm concerned with.

I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing, and I don't ever feel like I'm working in a cycle in that respect, because it's every day anyway, no matter what I'm doing. Then I get to a point when I've collected together enough words that seem like they want to be songs rather than poems, or sometimes not.

You know if I see a work that really I am very affected by and inspired by then it makes me want to try things with my work that maybe I hadn't considered trying before and I think that is the biggest complement that you can pay somebody.

I don't hold onto anything, because it's a waste of energy to do so, really. There's nothing that I can do about the way people want to write about me. I just try and concentrate on my work and do that as well as I can.

First off, I think nudity is taken differently in America, though they did make a fuss in England, too.

Like I have to pretend like I'm a male rapper, that I got stacks and we're in the club, and what do I want to say. And then, when writing Rare I could just be PJ.

I didn't know folk music growing up, no. It's something I've come to study, really, because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication, the traveling storyteller, the bard, the minstrels.

Some people, like Leonard Cohen, write one album every 10 years, and labor over a song for five years at a time.

I enjoy looking like a tart and thinking like a politician.

People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.

I don't loathe interviews, I'm just one of those people who makes music because I find it difficult to talk.

It's so interesting to me how songs take on a shape and body of their own and grow.

And all of these writers offer me a greater understanding of what it is to be alive, and that is such an incredible thing art can do for other people. It made me want to try and get close to this strange, mysterious thing that people can do with words.

I've always felt that I'm affected by the world, by the way we treat each other, by the way different countries treat each other. I've always been very affected by politics, society, but I never got to a place as a writer where I felt like I could begin to deal with such things and do it well.

I firmly disbelieve that one has to be a tortured soul to write good music.

I did photography, painting, and drawing, but I prefer sculpture. I like it because it's very physical.