If nothing else, I have money.
Seventy per cent humidity is ideal for vocal cords.
How could I be so immature to think you could replace the missing elements in me. How extremely lazy of me.
Part of me is probably more conservative than people realise. I like my old string quartets, I don't like music that's trippy for trippy's sake.
I don't like records that are the same from beginning to end, that are too styled and slick. Everything is so designed and airbrushed and Botoxed, it makes us think, 'Oh, everybody's perfect except me. Everything's smooth except me.' But nothing is smooth.
People from the rock and roll world have felt for years that electronic music had no soul, but now electronic music can not only have soul but have all the shapes in the world.
Formats are just illusions, and it's about the relationship between the person that makes music and the person that listens to music. Every time there's a new format, the iron is hot, and you can mold it.
Icelandic people are really educated. But maybe we are at where the people in the States were 50 years ago, where they think that stuff that isn't done with a hammer or physical power is not a job. It's that backwards.
I've never done an album like this. With Biophilia, I was being like Kofi Annan - I had to be the pacifist to try to unite the impossible. Maybe that was a strange, personal job between me and myself, to show how overreaching I was being as a woman. The only way I could express that was by comparing it to the universe.
It wasn't just one journalist getting it wrong, everybody was getting it wrong.
I've written arrangements for choirs and strings in the past, but I usually write music with my voice or a keyboard and then I'll get someone who is good at writing scores to write it out. Or, if I have the luxury of time, I will go in a room and hear the people perform and then change it through what I hear, not on paper. I can read music OK, but I probably rebelled a little - music changes into something else when you read it.
I’ve been traveling in Guatemala in the rainforest, and here all these houses are made of sticks. It seems so easy to make one.
I always wanted to be a farmer. There is a tradition of that in my family.
Maybe I'll be a feminist in my old age.
In school, I guess I was a difficult, know-it-all type of student... I was always complaining that music education was too academic.
Icelandic peoples were the ones who memorized sagas... We were the first rappers of Europe.
Usually when you see females in movies, they feel like they have these metallic structures around them, they are caged in by male energy.
The reason I do interviews is because I'm protecting my songs.
Kids draw masterpieces - they're the best painters ever. I think the same with music. They could totally write amazing music if they just had the right tools. It's important at that age to set up something, and then maybe afterwards you can go study your violin for 500 hours a week. But at least in the beginning you know about the options.
Now that rock is turning 50, it's become classical in itself. It's interesting to see that development.
Over the last 10 years, there have been so many incredible albums created in bedrooms by people who never would've gotten an album deal.
I want to support young girls who are in their 20s now and tell them: You're not just imagining things. It's tough. Everything that a guy says once, you have to say five times.
