Fiona Apple
Sometimes interviews are fun and good conversations, but stuff like photo shoots and appearances at places where you have to meet a lot of people - I was never really made for this kind of stuff.
The age thing really bugs me. Do people have more of a right to not like what I say because I'm 19?
What's really good is African drum music.
The quick success was a bit strange to get used to.
I just tend to do things to myself that I don't realize I'm doing. Sometimes I bite my lip so that it splits and hurts, and yet I can't stop. And sometimes I'd play shows on the last run, I'd scratch my neck while I was singing, and I'd horrified to see these red streaks of blood after.
If you want to see me cry, just come to a photo shoot.
And if I'm being honest, I don't think I have an ex-boyfriend who would have something mean to say about me.
I can't remember writing any of the songs that I've written.
I feel like I'm 100 years old. I can't tell you what I did today. I can't tell you what I did for seven years. I can't tell you. It happens so seamlessly - I'm just floating along and seven years go by.
I can bake. I made myself some nice French fries once. But otherwise I just eat out. Lots of salad bars.
I wasn't very ambitious as a child. I'm still not.
But I honestly don't read critics. My dad reads absolutely everything ever written about me. He calls me up to read ecstatic reviews, but I always insist that I can't hear them. If you give value to the good reviews, you have to give value to the criticism.
Hearing my songs in public freaks me out a bit. There was one restaurant I really liked in L.A., but I had to stop going there when they started playing my music. It felt kinda awkward.
The only reason that it takes me seven years to do stuff is because I just don't really have a plan.
I got a lot of problems, but I'm really good at intuiting what I need to do to be happy with whatever I create. I know when to stop myself, I know when to start, I know when to leave something alone. I guess I just kind of indulge that completely, and so I just take my time.
I also just accept that I might never want to write a song again.
In a strange way, I'm way more comfortable onstage than anywhere else.
In a sense it's a lot crazier when you're on the road and it's a lot less stable, but it's actually really healthy for me because it keeps me from isolating, which I tend to do a lot.
You think you're looking at things all the time, but you're not looking at things, you're looking at what your brain is interpreting through light and color. And who knows what everybody else sees?
When I was a kid - 10, 11, 12, 13 - the thing I wanted most in the world was a best friend. I wanted to be important to people; to have people that understood me. I wanted to just be close to somebody.
I don't go on lunch dates with friends. I hear about people having dinner parties, but I never do that. I'm not really human.
I walk my dog at dawn because I don't like people to be around.
There were songs I would write about breaking up with somebody before I broke up with them, months and months before I broke up with them.
If I have one success in my relationship history, it's with the people who listen to my music. I think that they'll be there with me forever, and I'll be there with them forever. And I'm totally satisfied with that.
I don't think what I look like is relevant.
I'm not the Queen. I'm not a huge superstar; I don't get paparazzi around me.
As a person who performs on stage, it's good to be emotionally open. If you mess with someone when they are in that state, it's like you're messing with an animal when it's eating.
I think I'm better at live shows than I used to be because I'm way more comfortable with the uncomfortable pauses between songs. Now, rather than trying to talk or do a costume change, I'll use those moments for myself. I listen to what other people are playing, or just rest, or dance, even though I don't know how to.
I wrote 'Criminal' in 45 minutes when everyone else went to lunch because I had to have a hit. I can force myself to do the work, but only if someone is right up behind me.
I was never somebody who grew up going, 'I really want to be a singer in a band,' and I never had any ambition toward anything, really.
I'm such an incredibly, stupidly sensitive person that everything that happens to me, I experience it really intensely. I feel everything very deeply. And when you feel things deeply and you think about things a lot and you think about how you feel, you learn a lot about yourself. And when you know yourself, you know life.Collection: Thinking
I really don't think anything I do is a mistake. It could be if I didn't learn from it. But in the long run, no matter what I do for the rest of my life, I'll know I did something wonderful by saying what I felt. That's what I said at the awards there: "Go with yourself." And that's what I did.Collection: Running
When you feel things deeply and you think about things a lot and you think about how you feel, you learn a lot about yourself.Collection: Thinking
Nobody is strong enough to not be influenced.Collection: Strong
Love is love, and there will never be too much.Collection: Love Is
This world is bullshit. And you shouldn't model your life — wait a second — you shouldn't model your life about what you think that we think is cool and what we're wearing and what we're saying and everything. Go with yourself. Go with yourself.Collection: Thinking
It pisses me off to think we're conditioned to push away bad feelings and think anything that's uncomfortable is to be avoided. When things are really bad nowadays, I recognize the value in it because it's me filling my quota- it's going to make my joy more intense later.Collection: Thinking
What will an angel say that the devil wants to know?Collection: Angel
Hunger hurts, but starving works, when it costs too much to love.Collection: Hurt
You fondle my trigger, then you blame my gunCollection: Gun
When I was a kid--10, 11, 12, 13--the thing I wanted most in the world was a best friend. I wanted to be important to people; to have people that understood me. I wanted to just be close to somebody. And back then, a thought would go through my head almost constantly: "There's never gonna be a room someplace where there's a group of people sitting around, having fun, hanging out, where one of them goes, 'You know what would be great? We should call Fiona. Yeah, that would be good.' That'll never happen. There's nothing interesting about me." I just felt like I was a sad little boring thing.Collection: Fun
Home is where my habits have a habitatCollection: Home
It's calm under the waves in the blue of my oblivion.Collection: Blue
How can I ask anyone to love me when all I do is beg to be left alone?Collection: Left Alone
Everything that happens to me, I experience it really intensely. I feel it very deeply.Collection: Very Deep
I was screaming into the canyon at the moment of my death; the echo I created outlasted my last breath.Collection: Echoes
"The way I feel about music -- any song, any style -- is that there is no right and wrong, only true and false. If the music and lyrics are conceived out of honesty and if the production of the song goes along with its original message, then what has been expressed is art, regardless of what anyone's opinion is of it. So things are a lots impler if you just tell the truth.Collection: Song
My mind goes to tragedy first.Collection: Mind
I'm a tulip in a cup. I stand no chance of growing upCollection: Growing Up