Neko Case Quotes

We don’t need more ‘What if the mother is going to die’ debated, we need ‘I had an abortion because I was not ready to be a mother. It was my choice and my right. I own it. Back the f@#( up.

If you want to be noticed as a drop of water, why would you move to the ocean?

Country music is completely punk-rock. It's the original punk-rock.

I think if you're a lady playing a guitar, other ladies need to see you playing the guitar, and they don't need to see men come out and fix your equipment for you. It just looks incredibly pussy. So I just do it all myself.

The most tender place in my heart is for strangers. I know it's unkind, but my own blood is much too dangerous.

You're not supposed to totally know what's happening. The songs are supposed to give you clues so you can fill in the blanks.

The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight. The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You.

I try to think of the songs as little movies. They're always pretty visual to me. I can always sort of see them. I don't always know what the end result is going to be, and I don't know exactly what it's going to sound like, but I can kinda see them.

Playing in an independent rock band will eventually make you equal parts truck driver, gladiator and mule. Glamour is for those with trust funds.

We shouldn't censor ourselves based on the weak idea of "looking cool." It's such a waste of potential awesomeness.

Around 2010, I kind of looked up and said, I'm 40 years old. You know, I chose music. I don't have a husband. I don't have any kids. Like, I chose music. So, I had to make a decision. Like, do I want to do something else, or do I want to go from journeyman to master? And I realized, I want to be a really good musician.

I grew up with lots of animals and I related more to them than I did to people. I feel a lot of empathy for them.

I would be a huge hypocrite if I didn't tell you that at one time in my life I thought the way that you made music was you got on a major label and you got famous.

Everybody in my band is married, pretty much, and have lives at home, and I don't want them to be away from their families so long that they just start to feel psychotic. You have to go home and stand around in your bathrobe doing your dishes to feel like a normal person sometimes.

Everyone has to kind of fend for themselves.

I don't feel nervous or fearful when I'm on stage.

I like to think that I'm not old yet.

I have this typical Ukrainian face. Even people who know my music don't recognize me most of the time, thank God.

I try not to be overly literal. When I'm writing songs, I write down a lot of words, and then I try to simplify it. I like to give people hints or words that make visual pictures for them.

Being the boss of your own career, you get used to having veto power and getting what you want, or as close to what you want as you have mapped out.

Every band wants to go believe me, not everybody makes it, but they want to.

I always end up working with people that do a really good job, so I'm the only one that I'm worried about disappointing me, not the musicians ever.

People get strange about whether you've written your own songs, which seems really stupid considering that, especially in Country Music, it's about oral tradition and passing things on and the songs weren't meant to be played by one person and then forgotten.

I'm too small for the universe to revolve around me. It is a huge relief!

A live show is one of the last holdouts of a thing that makes you feel a part of a community, where you'll go and maybe meet your future wife or boyfriend, or you're taking your sister to her first show. These are the things that you remember later in your life.

If I could ever be on a Missy Elliott record, I could then die. Missy Elliott, Mary J. Blige - I love hearing them interviewed, I love the way they talk about their art. They're very self-assured, they're funny, they're inviting. I love it.

I have a pathological fear of getting my picture taken.

I like driving. I'm a real sucker for driving across North America - I never get sick of it, ever.

There's not like a science to it, necessarily, but I'm also the kind of person who spends a long time in the studio. I will spend my entire advance just getting it done, which is probably stupid, but I don't have extravagant taste. I mean, I paid for it, so there you go. Why not? The recording process is also very fun.

It's like sometimes, you can just lay back and it takes the pressure off of you.

I don't think it's important for everyone necessarily, and I totally respect that because everyone writes differently.

I think I have a lot of empathy for animals and nature in general. Those things just make me comfortable. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, around a lot of animals. I feel for them.

I know that I can sing really loud. It's like having that really big Evinrude engine on the back of your fishing boat. But I've been trying to be more dynamic with my voice and not just singing on ten all of time out of terror.

Rich kids who write songs about food stamps always piss me off. I'm not going to write any songs about that, either.

When you live in a lot of places, you can't help but have them become part of you. Technically, I am a Southerner, but I did not grow up in the South. So I'm a Southerner by accident, but a Washingtonian.

I don't know anybody who doesn't hate being called alt.country. It just sounds like a website. I don't mind being called Americana, I don't mind being called country noir, or independent country is fine, but the words alt.country make me insane.

I didn't want to be the girl who posed in 'Playboy' and then - by the way - made some music.

There are things about the production I'm not crazy about though. People mix records to be heard in cars and to have the bass incredibly loud so the vocals have to fight with everything so there's no dynamic left, and that's kind of a bummer. That may not be my taste but I'm not going to go, "Kanye's not very good," because he's pretty badass. It's a difference in taste, like the New Pornographers and myself have different taste in production as well but it all works out in the end.

I once asked a studio guy in Toronto, "How many people don't use auto tune?" and he said, "You and Nelly Furtado are the only two people who've never used it in here." Even though I'm not into Nelly Furtado, it kind of made me respect her. It's cool that she has some integrity.

Dream dictionaries are so disappointing. They're so limited, and I think they're just total bullshit. I really do. I don't know much about the Freudian theory of dreams; it's probably more interesting than your average hippie dream dictionary, but it's got to be a lot deeper than that. It can't all be about sex all the time, so I don't know if Freud is right either.

I want the recording process to be a time in my life that I will remember.

I was raised to be modest to the point of fanaticism. In my family, we don't talk about ourselves to each other. Vanity is considered the worst possible sin. I've gotten better about having to describe things. If you're going to make a record and people are going to write about you, it's your responsibility to answer questions. It's validating - I'm just very clumsy.

I have a hard time taking myself seriously. My band the New Pornographers doesn't take me seriously, which is why I love them. We can't stand up there and pretend. What we're doing is really important to me and it's my job and I love it, but I can't just stand there unflinchingly noble in front of the audience.

There's this art form in songwriting that's incredibly difficult - to be really funny in a song and also really touching. I can't do that.

I'm pretty self-conscious, so I tend to work in a way where I say what I need to say and get out rather than revisit things. It's kind of a collage style. I realized that it had more emotional weight that way. I'll always be in the developmental stages as far as being a songwriter.

The relationship of humans to nature. We are sadly divorced from it.

I remember people would talk about Country Music like it was this sexist, lame thing. Well, no, because Dolly Parton is writing songs and playing her guitar and producing. She's doing it all and she's got hits on the radio.

I'm not very interesting. Birds are interesting. I could stand there lip-synching all day long, but it would feel funny, and people would be able to tell. I'm not a good actress.

All I want to do is sing on other people's records.

When you get an idea, it's not going to be a great idea until you push it. You’ve got to push it until it’s uncomfortable. And then you’ve got to ask yourself, ‘Does my project say to my audience what I want it to say?’ ”