PJ Harvey Quotes

People have a tendency to see country life through rose-colored glasses.

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.

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.

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.

You know, two people can say exactly the same words, saying the same story, and it would mean something entirely different.

I enjoy looking like a tart and thinking like a politician.

Shame is the shadow of love.

I see men come and go, but there'll be one who'll collect my soul.

I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing, and I don't ever feel like I'm working in a cycle in that respect, because it's every day anyway, no matter what I'm doing. Then 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 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.

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.

Ive always been very visceral in that I feel things very deeply.

I think of myself as a songwriter, a weaver of story and imagination in a way that a novelist might write a book.

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.

Making me into a role model is placing too much importance on what I see as a work in progress.

People have this idea of me being some kind of monster, and that's the complete opposite of who I am.

I'm not an autobiographical writer, but I am a writer who deals with human emotion on all levels.

I think that's always very valuable: to keep the mind open to receiving all sorts of information, which can then be used in my work, but also just as a human being.

It's good to feel excited by the environment you're in.

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.

Some people, like Leonard Cohen, write one album every 10 years, and labor over a song for five years at a time.

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.

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.

I'm finding my way, and I make mistakes.

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.

I didn't know folk music growing up, no. It's something I've come to study, really, because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication, the traveling storyteller, the bard, the minstrels.

It's so interesting to me how songs take on a shape and body of their own and grow.

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.

When I'm writing for rappers it's kinda like switching, "Okay, you're not PJ. Now you have to act like a rapper."

Writing is something that I practice at every day to get better at.

Fly with me, touch the face of the true God. And then cry with joy at the depth of my love.

I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do, then I'm myself, and if I don't, then I give nothing.

My town was even smaller. Only six hundred people. We didn't have a grocery store.

In college, I thought I wanted to be solely an artist, and then when I got here, to college, I was like, "Okay, well I want to be a songwriter," 'cause it was like close to Nashville.

I didn't even know the industry of songwriting existed. I thought everybody sang songs and they were only singing the songs that they wrote. So after I found out about songwriting in college, I was like, "Okay, I want to do that."

I just started writing and writing for people. And then, like I guess after (a) year of getting some placements, I kinda got a shot to be an artist. Long story short I think, yeah.

As far as in my adult life, it kinda started (with) writing first 'cause I went to school in Nashville. I mean, not Nashville but close to Nashville, and I met my managers in L.A. at a convention randomly. And then, it kinda just started from there. And then, I got my publishing deal.

But even when I do give interviews, I always come across as such a completely different person. It seems like there's no controlling it anyway.

The first song I heard from me was Meek Mill ["I Don't Know"], it was his first single before he went (to jail). I remember the first time I heard it was like eleven thirty at night, and I was like, "Yo, this is crazy!" And, I was smiling from ear to ear.

My mom is a sculptress.

I feel like I make a soundtrack for the come up, and I feel like there's so many people that's trying to figure out how to chase their dreams, or that are in the process of chasing their dreams, so they connect with that. And then being a singer, you don't really get to touch on nothing either.

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.

People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.

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.

Never settle for anything less than you want.

I feel like when I'm writing for other people, when I'm doing rap hooks, it's kinda like playing dress up for me...

I think I've been interested in music since I was little.

I did photography, painting, and drawing, but I prefer sculpture. I like it because it's very physical.

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.

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.