PJ Harvey
I feel like "Not For Long" was one for me just because I got to work with two people that I looked up to...Collection: Two
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.Collection: War
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.Collection: War
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.Collection: War
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.Collection: Mother
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.Collection: Song
Being a recording artist and having thousands of people listening to your music and singing your songs, and paying for it? It feels great!Collection: Song
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.Collection: Hard Work
I am someone that follows the news and reads newspapers yet what do you believe and what don't you.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Two
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.Collection: Collecting Things
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.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Country
When I'm writing for rappers it's kinda like switching, "Okay, you're not PJ. Now you have to act like a rapper."Collection: Writing
Writing is something that I practice at every day to get better at.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Underdog
I think of myself as a songwriter, a weaver of story and imagination in a way that a novelist might write a book.Collection: Book
Some people, like Leonard Cohen, write one album every 10 years, and labor over a song for five years at a time.Collection: Song
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.Collection: Country
My town was even smaller. Only six hundred people. We didn't have a grocery store.Collection: People
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.Collection: War
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.Collection: Beautiful
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 hopeCollection: Country
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.Collection: Trying
It's so interesting to me how songs take on a shape and body of their own and grow.Collection: Song
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.Collection: Country
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.Collection: Wise
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.Collection: Passion
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.Collection: Clothes
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.Collection: Artist
Fly with me, touch the face of the true God. And then cry with joy at the depth of my love.Collection: Religious
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.Collection: Together
People want to build musicians into mythical beings.Collection: People
To think of myself as a role model is extremely flattering, but I could never accept that, because Im just learning like everybody else.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Mean
We just kind of lost our way. But we were looking to be free. One day we'll float. Take life as it comes.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Writing
Maybe you're a singer or not, but what taps into the soul leads to the heart, and that's really what I came away with, with the starting point for the record being that I could speak as a human being and feel things very deeply.Collection: Heart
I would listen most particularly to the countries whose language I didn't understand, didn't know what they were singing. But being a singer myself, I could understand because of the emotion.Collection: Country
I've always felt profoundly about what's going on in the world on a daily basis. What I hadn't felt was that I was at a point in my writing career where I could write about these things in songs and do it well.Collection: Song
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.Collection: Song
I'm a very private person, so obviously I don't enjoy talking about more personal matters. But at the same time I care very much about my work and I would like people to know that it exists. So I appreciate that there's a meeting point, where I would like people to know about the work that I'm doing, and that requires me to talk about it.Collection: Talking
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.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Writing
Love for money is my sin, any man calls, I'll let him in.Collection: Sex
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.Collection: Writing
I'm doing quite a lot of painting on stones - little funny fish and animals.Collection: Animal
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.Collection: Running