Beth Orton Quotes

One time I completely thought I'd turned into a werewolf and was sure I could see hairs sprouting from my face. At those times I'd suddenly go very quiet and not talk to anyone, stunned from the developments, being a werewolf and all.

From the beginning, I wanted to make dance music with a human element to it.

To me songwriting is more like redemption. I can extract the poison or the pollen, the essence from a situation and the rest becomes a husk that blows away.

When I first started writing, a friend said I should be careful because I'm letting people know how to reach right in and play with my workings. And they do!

The upside to smoking is that you get to be social. I was looking for a light when I bumped into Ben Harper's manager. A couple of days later, Ben and I were in the studio.

I was born on a pig farm in Norfolk. We grew up in the city called Norwich in Norfolk, then I moved to London when I was thirteen.

The way I write, words can means lots of different things.

When I was really young I used to collect frog spawn. I made a pond out of an old sink and I loved to spend hours watching the frogs grow.

I'd say my greatest fear is fear itself.

Heaven is what we spend our lives trying to find.

Even when I haven't had money, I found money to travel. It's a luxury that's a kind of necessity, I think.

I don't read music; I taught myself guitar.

I learned to embrace my individuality, and if that meant writing a song on one chord over and over again, then that's what I do.

My manager said the next best inspiration to heartbreak is travel, and it's true.

I didn't jump a lot of trees because I didn't like heights. I liked getting a mirror and walking around with it facing the sky. I'd imagine I was walking in the tops of the trees and falling into the sky, or walking up the stairs whilst going down.

Norfolk is not on the way to anywhere, you don't stop off on the way somewhere else - it's an end in itself. You have to want to go there; it's an effort.

Therapy is like telling your nightmares when you're a kid; they lose their power to hurt and control.

I get a feeling, on a guitar, and I sort of mess around until something resonates with me, and then I just find that what happens is that a melody comes, and with that, words.

Before you worry about what genre it is, about whether it's a loop or a drum, it's about what suits the song. It's using what's within your reach, but also reaching for everything you can. I don't know if I always get it right, because I don't know every sound yet.

I was scared of the Bible - it seemed whenever I read it I got bad luck. Then I befriended a couple of Jesus's disciples and I used to show them modern life - how to run the hot and cold taps and things like that. They seemed alright but it didn't change my feelings about the Bible jinx.

At about the age of ten, my friends and I discovered the joys of sitting in graveyards drinking merrydown cider and kissing and stealing our elder siblings' records.

Kissing was something I did a lot of. Kissing in a wheat field as the sun begins to set on a summer's evening, with the haze of that light.

I don't believe in trouble. Because I think that trouble is sometimes good, sometimes bad. I've been known to be called trouble, which I think is quite a compliment. But I suppose, thinking about it, that my best and worst trouble has always had something to do with a man.

I want it to be more universal than that - like a painter doesn't have to explain his life story away to justify his painting.

I'm not comfortable holidaying in other people's poverty.

When I'm on a roll nothing makes me happier or feel more satisfied, like plugging in, life makes sense.

We're all like little ants who scurry around with the materials that are at hand right now. Each generation finds new materials. Its just evolution, isn't it?

My dad got me a chemistry book one Christmas and I burnt the garden shed down. I remember there was the most beautiful smell forever after in the remains.