Bat For Lashes Quotes

There's this label called Neurotica by these sweet girls that have given me some lovely things to wear, and we might collaborate on making a little piece. They're really lovely, and I think they've been quite inspired by me in turn.

David Bowie worked with Brian Eno and dressed up in extraordinary clothes, but he was also a brilliant songwriter who captured the thoughts of a generation. He was hugely successful, without compromise.

I think there's a karmic purpose that souls make before they decide to come into people's bodies and become someone's parent, or become someone's child. Maybe my dad disappearing was his way of giving me material with which to work, or a predisposition to feel heightened emotions.

There's a part of me that wishes I could go out in T-shirt and jeans, 'cause I really love Patti Smith, Cat Power, girls who look so casual; that appeals to me 'cause I guess it's the opposite from what I do. But I can never let myself just do that - I always have to try and dress up and create something.

Each album takes two or two-and-a-half years to finish between recording and touring. It's like being with an old boyfriend every single night watching the same things on TV. There is a world out there going on that I'm missing.

I think the best cure is to stop doing the thing that you think you should be doing and go and have a bit of fun in another medium, maybe other crazy things.

Mentorship is really important. I really like to talk to people who have been in the music industry much longer than me about artists' block, things I'm struggling with, or the music business. It's really important for artists to have a community. Sometimes you can feel quite isolated.

Exploring the different avenues and being open to synchronicity and crazy coincidences and little things happening is part of going on your journey to investigate - and the little jewels you might find along the way, my job is to bring those back home and put them on my album.

When I was young, I wanted to be a writer or painter. I was always writing stories, and I excelled at drawing. My teachers encouraged my art work. When I was 9 or 10, I began learning piano and started writing music.

The first album I started out, I just did everything completely alone. I think it has to do with confidence. The more confidence you develop in your own sound, the more you can open up and alchemize that with other people, just set it free, and not feel challenged by that.

I think music naturally wants to be played with more than one person. There's a surprise element, and you don't know what it will be, and it's up to that other person's energy to help create this third thing.

When I use electronic beats and program things, there's something quite brain about that - you're feeling it in your body but it's like a puzzle you wanna solve, and it gets very detailed. I really enjoy that side of music.

I get people being frightened of me. One time I did this photo shoot where I had hairy armpits - I was really digging it, but they were like, 'We'll airbrush that out.'

Dad was an amazing storyteller and illustrator, which he did in his spare time - very inspiring and dramatic.

I get invited to premieres, and I've been to a few fashion shows and stuff, but I always get really bored. I feel quite awkward. You have to wear something by them, and it all feels like, 'Why am I doing free advertising for you?'

The way you wield your power is about using it to afford you opportunities that you wouldn't otherwise have. So I'm very creatively ambitious, and I just hope people notice it; that's all I want.

When I was little, I grew up in a place called Hertfordshire, which is just near London, but out in the country, and I visited Pakistan in the summers to go and see my family on my dad's side.

I love dressing up.

I was a nursery school teacher, and I worked with youth groups. I loved that job. It was exhausting, but you got a lot back - all their purity and insight and innocence is so on the surface, and they're so unrepressed; they'd really scream at you and then give you a massive kiss.

I like to get dark sometimes and then come back out into the light.

I'd love to win a Grammy! Not ambitious or anything. And just having a really lovely bunch of kids and a happy family life, would be good for me.

I have lots of clothes that I don't wear because I'm bad for impulse buying. They sit in my cupboard looking forlorn, but if I haven't worn something for a couple of months, I usually realise that it would be much better off in one of my friends' wardrobes.

When I was little, people like Talking Heads were on the radio. There was something geeky yet groundbreaking about them.

They say for every high high there must be a low low low low low

I like it when people make an effort to wear things that you wouldn't normally put together - I like eccentrics.

I think what I wanted to do was meet someone who knew more than me about songwriting structure and progressions and middle eights and things that more traditional writers write and I don't usually employ.

When I finished touring 'Fur and Gold,' I was just like, 'What am I doing? What do I have? Where is my home?' I didn't really know where it was, so I went to New York to try and make it there.

In a repressed society, artists fulfil a sense of harking back to instant gratification, or immediate expression, by doing things that function on the edge of society, or outside of what is conventionally accepted.

In the music industry, intelligence in women is undervalued.

I think Deborah Harry has a really sexy, cool and quite playful sex-kitten kind of style I really like.

I find the world pretty overwhelming, so I'm getting into meditation and doing lots of yoga. And I love my garden, and I love nature, and I feel like that grounds me and keeps my mind clear.

I did gardening and cooking and drawing and reading to try take the pressure off the music - just being eclectic and putting the fun back in and bringing more innocence in again is really important.

Music's free and music's for everyone to enjoy and express and interpret. It transcends countries and times and decades.

I cry a lot when I feel empathy. I can feel heartbroken by life, and I cry quite easily, sometimes for no reason. It's healthy, I think.

I feel empathy for people who are trapped in a prison of self-consciousness in an uncomfortable way. We can be free, but we're so held back. So perhaps that's why I feel a duty to make my work. I feel liberated when I'm doing it, and I want other people to feel liberated through it.

I always think that the exceptional people are those who remain outsiders but still communicate on a grand scale. I think I want everyone to feel more free, and so I feel really claustrophobic on behalf of lots of people.

I live in a Moomin house in East London which I fill with blankets and nice crockery and get people round for dinner. When you travel a lot, you feel rootless and adrift - this is my sanctuary, where I can breathe out.

I don't think music is the first thing I turn to. For me, I think visual art is more the thing. Sometimes when I've been doing music for a while, I can't really take any more in.

I'm not really frightened by experimenting - that's the main thing. I really like mixing very old beautiful pieces that are from thrift shops or that have some historical value with quite new futuristic things.

I want to communicate to the everyday person. I don't want to just roll around in my own avant-garde pool of coolness.

There's something in me that loves to inspire people: when I'm playing music, I imagine all this sparkly stardust going through everyone. I want to make people come alive.

I usually speak with all my drummers so that I write my songs with them in mind, and we'll have bass sounds, choir sounds, and then you can multi-task with all these orchestral sounds. Through the magic medium of technology, I can play all kinds of sounds - double bass and stuff.