PJ Harvey Quotes - Page 6

I grab an instrument to make my body a song, but I'm not a player as such, maybe a little more on guitar, but certainly not piano.

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.

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.

I like to be around things that I find inspiring.

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.

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.

Obviously, the emotions I want to convey through music are streamed through the way I interpret life.

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.

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.

I come from an art-school background, and I still feel that in my music, it's about exploration and challenging myself, about putting myself in a place that's frightening because I haven't been there before.

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.

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.

I had a chip on my shoulders 'cause I felt like I was being overlooked.

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.

The devil wanders into my soul.

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.

It [ "Not For Long"] was the biggest song that I've had, and I actually heard it on the radio multiple times.

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.

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.

[I] try to do both because the writing for me, to be a new artist, the writing is gonna pay the bills.

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.

[Writing] has helped me meet people.

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs.

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.

I'm always writing, the past 10 years. A lot has changed, in that it's something I do every day.