Laura Marling
I feel increasingly like age is very irrelevant. Quite often, cynicism is confused with wisdom, and my scorn is confused with a knowing, which I don't have.Collection: Age
Age is relative. Experience is relative. And I think often intensity is confused with maturity.Collection: Experience
I'm not religious, I'm not romantic and I live purely by logic. I make every decision by logic and sometimes that leads me to the right and sometimes to the wrong decision.Collection: Romantic
I need some isolation, it's necessary to me, that's just who I am. I need to be left alone.Collection: Alone
I am slightly fascinated by the question of whether humanity is capable of change. I may have come to the conclusion that we're not, but we keep trying.
Womanhood is something you don't consider until it hits you.
Now that I'm feeling the responsibilities of adulthood, the choices we make become an incredible weight.
I'm reluctantly interested in love and helplessly interested in logic and yet they're so conflicting. And they're both necessary for a happy balance, a happy existence... I think.
My songs are not pretty. They're what I call optimistic realism.
I just think of everything I do and how happy it will make me to do it. I don't like having my photograph taken, for instance, so I don't do that often.
You are what you can prove you've done. That's how people judge you.
It is quite hard to relax in London. I always say I'd move somewhere quieter, but I am a bit of a confirmed urbanite now - it crept up on me without me noticing. I always think that I function quite well on my own, unusually so, but then I'm reminded how important people are to me.
I've noticed that, with many of the authors I like, I tend to think I would dislike them as human beings or that there'd be a healthy amount of debate if I ever did meet them.
I'd like to make music for as long as I can; it feels like something I need to do.
I feel sometimes that I'm in a constant state of being lost in translation, and I guess that why I write songs.
I feel like I'm creeping closer to finding the situation that triggers songwriting, which is obviously an extreme of an emotion.
I never edit the songs that come out. And they tend to come out as a whole. The closest thing I have ever done to editing them is just cutting out a verse, but never rewriting lyrics.
I'd prefer to be good, but I'm not always. I struggle.
I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night.
My reaction to everything in life is when it gets a bit complicated to water it down and make it simple again.
I know there are lots of positives in the evolution of technology, but I also think it will be responsible for the end of a unique character, of a specific kind of geographical culture. The world is getting so small, and mass production is getting so big. Everything is in danger of becoming the same.
I'm a songwriter, and I understand artistic licence. We can embellish, go on little journeys and explore our inner selves. It can be quite self-indulgent.
I'm a bit of a magpie: whatever I see or hear or read feeds into the songs.
It took a lot of time and practice for me to realise that there's no point trying to be something you're not.
I love the way you can fall in love with a piece of literature; how words alone can get your heart doing that.
People don't appreciate music any more. They don't adore it. They don't buy vinyl and just love it. They love their laptops like their best friend, but they don't love a record for its sound quality and its artwork.
No one starts playing my kind of music to make a fortune. But I do want to keep doing what I do and I do want to continue selling records. And I would, eventually, quite like some money.
When a song wants to be written, it will be written.
I'm incredibly neurotic and a control freak. I like the thought that if there's going to be anyone to blame it's going to be me.
I'm a lot more observational than personal in my writing. My writing is mostly a lot of questions without answers.
I get up, go and get a coffee, and go do the crossword - I'm loyal to one particular paper, the 'Guardian' - and that's my idea of a perfect morning.
I think your most intimate thoughts are only honest when they're in your head.
When I'm singing I feel like I'm talking to someone. I'm in conversation when I perform - either with myself or with whomever is listening.
All my songs come from me because I only seem able to write about myself and my experiences.
I definitely tell things at arm's length but that is conscious. No part of me wants everybody to know what's going on.
The romanticised life, where all the great poetry and music and art of the world comes from, is great but it requires a lot of self-indulgence.
I know how ridiculous this sounds because of the job I do but I don't believe in romanticism and make-believe.
I've always loved books by the Bronte sisters. I love Jane Austen, too. I'm more influenced by people like her than by pop culture.
People think I look odd onstage. But the way I deal with being incredibly nervous is by concentrating really hard.
I don't need to sell tons of records, but I want longevity. I want to make music for the rest of my life.
If I don't have an outlet in which to express myself...throug h songwriting or other mediums...I get a bit jittery.Collection: Outlets
I sound awful saying it but I think it can be like that. I see a lot of people in unstimulating relationships. And not just boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. They find themselves in stagnant friendships. If people were a little less scared [of ending things] they'd get more out of life… You meet the right person at the right time and they fulfil a certain something in your life. You fulfil something in theirs. But there's a time limit to that. Unless you choose to be bloody good company for the rest of your life, do you know what I mean?Collection: Girlfriend
I've got my laptop, but it troubles me in many ways. I don't have Twitter or Facebook or anything like that. It ruins a romantic idea, which might just be an illusion, a sense of depth or continuity. I know there are lots of positives in the evolution of technology, but I also think it will be responsible for the end of a unique character, of a specific kind of geographical culture. The world is getting so small, and mass production is getting so big. Everything is in danger of becoming the same.Collection: Character
I made an important decision, which was to pursue happiness. Rather than accept unhappiness. That's why I'm here, and it's great. I'm in a very good place in my life.Collection: Decision
Oh! To not need cognitive justification for every single thing. Wouldn't that be a life?Collection: Needs
I would never sit and write a song in front of anyone, because you're so vulnerable. I don't know at what point in the process that it becomes acceptable to pass them on. When a song wants to be written, it will be written. When it does come, I will very rarely go back and edit lyrics. I'm quite a rational human being, and the only part of my life that I can't rationalise, or can't make sense of, is how a song gets written or why.Collection: Song
I was an incredibly misanthrope. I couldn't relate to people my age, and I'm not sure why, as I wasn't particularly smart or interestingCollection: Smart
Women are presented with a very narrow aspect of the female narrative. And now we live in a culture and a time where it gets to us very quickly and very young. So how do you maintain in a child that sense of unique identity before they get thrown all that is projected on them?Collection: Children