PJ Harvey
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.Collection: Beautiful
I enjoy looking like a tart and thinking like a politician.Collection: Music
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.Collection: Song
Never settle for anything less than you want.Collection: Never Settle
I'm always trying to swim to new ground.Collection: Always Trying
Shame is the shadow of love.Collection: Shadow
You know, two people can say exactly the same words, saying the same story, and it would mean something entirely different.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Art
I'm finding my way, and I make mistakes.Collection: Mistake
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.Collection: Fall
I see men come and go, but there'll be one who'll collect my soul.Collection: Sex
People have this idea of me being some kind of monster, and that's the complete opposite of who I am.Collection: Who I Am
It's good to feel excited by the environment you're in.Collection: Environment
I feel that my dreamscapes are part of my everyday life, and sometimes I can't tell the difference.Collection: Everyday
Well, I'm quite a self-deprecating person.Collection: Self
What we are fed through the media I do not accept, unless you see it with your own eyes you cant trust anything.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Unique
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Theatre
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Skills
I was really influenced by a lot of Disney soundtracks, because that's what I used to watch all the time, and they always put music in it, which is why I tend to have popular melodies over harder beats.Collection: Watches
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: 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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Song
The devil wanders into my soul.Collection: Soul
Obviously, the emotions I want to convey through music are streamed through the way I interpret life.Collection: Want
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.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Thinking
I always wanted to be an artist. I think I was just waiting on somebody to approve me and be like, "Oh, okay, you should be an artist," you know 'cause it wasn't until I stopped looking for approval that I could actually do it.Collection: Artist
I had a chip on my shoulders 'cause I felt like I was being overlooked.Collection: Causes
I was like just writing and writing and then I kinda developed my sound. And then, my managers were like, "Okay, we're gonna try to get a deal." And then first it was Interscope, and then it was Atlantic. And then, I ended up signing with Atlantic, but it was like a long process, a really long... it was A LONG PROCESS. I feel like it took me two years to do it.Collection: Writing
When a poem might become a song, then certain parts are repeated and might become a refrain or a chorus, so they change in that way. But it's more the nature of the words and what they're saying that determines whether it's a poem or a song.Collection: Song
It [ "Not For Long"] was the biggest song that I've had, and I actually heard it on the radio multiple times.Collection: Song
There's a level of discipline I use as a writer, designed to get better at what I'm doing, that requires quite a lot of study and quite a lot of hard work as well.Collection: Hard Work
I was working with D'Mile - he's amazing! And I don't know, it was like that guitar riff was so crazy to me, and so I think I was frustrated about something that happened earlier and I feel like I'm just a good guy, I don't cut people off, I don't really call people out when they do stuff that they should be called out on, and I'm just always the one being the bigger person. So, that day "Gangster" just came out. That's just how I feel in that day to day life.Collection: Crazy
[I] try to do both because the writing for me, to be a new artist, the writing is gonna pay the bills.Collection: Writing
At this point in my life, I'm probably not gonna be able to stop writing because it's gonna help me be able to do what I need to do.Collection: Writing
[Writing] has helped me meet people.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Song
What Rare [albom] allows me to do is gonna show people other things that I'm capable of 'cause they really haven't heard a lot of things outside of the rap stuff that I do.Collection: Rap
I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs.Collection: Song
I'm always writing, the past 10 years. A lot has changed, in that it's something I do every day.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Trying
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.Collection: Thinking
If I ever meet a writer or a painter, I don't presuppose that they are like the work they are presenting.Collection: Painter
The artists that I love- whether painters or filmmakers- it's because something resonates in me because I've felt it.Collection: Artist
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.Collection: Artist
I make tiny wooden people with bits of hair. Puppets and things like that.Collection: Hair