Jenny Lewis Quotes

I'm obsessed with old rotary phones.

I think you kind of lose the human aspect when you make things too perfect.

I like babies, but not in the front row. I don't want to sing directly to a baby.

I'm a late bloomer. It's taken me a long time to find my voice, and I think all the records I've made over the years, I was finding my voice, and that's part of the process.

When I sit down to write a song, there is no filter. I'm not trying to write for anyone or anything specifically. It's just trying to capture a little piece of your soul - even if it's a really ugly part.

I'm not trying to repeat myself or cater myself to one specific group of people.

It's weird because I am accessible to people on Twitter, and I can choose to read good things or mean things, and people can reach out to me directly and tell me how much they hate me or love the song. It's a very strange new paradigm as an artist to find yourself among this kind of connectivity.

I would never say anything's over forever. How could you possibly know how you feel? How could you shut the door on anything?

I'm not always as disciplined as I should be. I don't sit down and write every day, but I should.

I used to be a huge collector, and my big thing was stickers.

Sometimes you don't understand what you're going through until you're on the other side of it.

When I was 18, I took a trip to Thailand with a friend. We stayed for a month. Bangkok was very raw for a teenager: there were no cellphones, no Internet, and the only music I had with me was this cassette by Liz Phair. I was writing a lot of poetry, and she embodied a talky style of songwriting that I found very accessible.

It sounds cheesy, but music has saved me in a lot of ways. If I had just continued acting, I don't think I would be alive.

I think regardless of where people are from, country music is a through line.

I've always just had sort of a dark take on life, I suppose, and hopefully, the music transcends that in a way.

The best shows I play, I almost don't even remember off the stage.

I'm a pretty terrible rapper. I always have been.

I'm an American songwriter, and I write from a very American perspective, and so did the records I grew up listening to.

I think Chris Martin is younger than I am, but when I met him, I felt like I was talking to my father. It's so strange, that feeling when someone is that famous - you assume that they are either older or better.

I think a lot of musicians play for the playback. I mean, that's the joy of recording - you want to hear what you've done and what you've contributed - but never listening to that playback kind of removes the intellectual part of making music, and it removes the tendency to be revisionist.

I wouldn't call it a faux pas, but I have about 12 tracksuits. I always travel in a tracksuit. I feel it makes people happy when they see me.

For me personally, I just try to prove myself in my work. I'm just trying to get better at what I do, and hopefully that will impact women in music, and hopefully the girls in the crowd will see my up there as a bandleader and think, 'Wow, maybe I can do that one day.'

I think the idea of opening up for a massive band is always better than actually doing it, and having your name on the ticket means more than the actual set.

I'm removed in my real life, and unable to express certain things face to face. So I have always found myself in this fantasy world. That's why I started writing songs and stories from a very young age. I'd much rather walk around anonymously cooking up tales than face the people that I have known forever.

I felt like hip-hop was my music, it was like my outsider music ... but then my mom started answering our phone, 'Yo, what's up.' She was hearing me talk to my friends. I was like, 'No, mom, don't cop the hip-hop talk.'

I tend to work well within a deadline. If I know I have to get something in three weeks, I tend to A, enjoy myself a little bit more, and B, really work well.

My mother had a great vinyl collection, and she was constantly playing female singer-songwriters. I first learned about classic song structures by listening to them, and Laura Nyro particularly stood out. Her voice was outside what you'd usually hear on the radio; that really appealed to me.

I grew up on Loretta Lynn and Dusty Springfield. I remember lying about it; it wasn't cool to listen to country when I was 12.

When something is coming off of a Neve board and being laid down on tape, it's like a warm blanket for the brain. When you're working in a digital form, it's so harsh; it's almost painful. Your ears get more fatigued if you're mixing all day.

It would be nice to create something that's healing rather than slightly creepy and darkly judgmental!

I never intended to set out and be a singer-songwriter. I just sort of became one because I put out my own record.

My favorite days off on the road are typically nowhere, like Bismarck, North Dakota, and you find yourself in a mall, and you're like, 'This is awesome!'

I learn lessons with every interview I give.

That is the true joy of being a solo artist. I can do whatever I want. I can go wherever I want. I can show up with my guitar and my song, and it can sound a hundred different ways. That's the freedom of being on your own. The flipside is: That's you on the cover. If it sucks, it's your fault.

I can't imagine how people will react to my music. For me, it's a really fluid process from one record to the next, but it's really up to the listener.

Being in a band is a really magical thing because you've got a family and you operate as this one entity. It's very democratic; everyone is involved in the output. But within that, there can be a lot of disagreements and strife.

I write music, really, to make myself feel better.

I have that working-class show-business blood coursing through my veins.

The Rilo Kiley song 'A Better Son/Daughter' is my most requested song - especially for people who are at the age I was when I wrote it. It's sort of a mid-twenties lament.

Some shows suck, but I always - the show must go on. I learned it from my past as a child actor. The show must go on. You have to just keep on with it.

When you're in your mid-thirties, the cult of people who have children around you all want you in their cult, and they constantly ask you, 'So when are you going to have a baby?'

As hard as I try to sound tough and dark, I still sound cute.

When I was a teenager, I went to Europe on a backpacking trip by myself, and I met a woman who was following Sebadoh. It was the early 1990s, and that was my introduction to indie rock.

I'm more in the Stones camp than the Beatles camp.

I am in a constant cycle of selling my clothes at Wasteland and buying from Goodwill. Once or twice a year, I go through my closet and donate everything to Goodwill. It feels like I am recycling my fashion.

I love 'Wowee Zowee.' That was the first Pavement record I bought.

I don't feel unlucky in love anymore, and it's not all emo. It's a scary place to be in when you're like: 'What am I supposed to write about now? I don't feel heartbroken, so now what?'

You wouldn't want to be in a rock band - trust me.

I don't write songs, play music and tour, really, for anyone else but myself. It's something that I have to do to stay alive.

I am a child of digital generation. I have done most of the records with Rilo Kiley on computers, on Pro Tools or other digital programs.

When you're in a band, inevitably, someone is siding with someone else, and you're fighting over something that happened in the band five years ago.

It's pretty amazing to write under any circumstances when someone gives you an assignment to write a song, even if it doesn't get accepted. I've written songs a couple of times, some for Disney, that haven't actually ended up in their films, but then you're left with a song forever.

I've gone through terrible periods of depression. But, at the core of my being, there's a strange, out-of-place optimist. Despite what I'm feeling, I'm always able to get up and do my job. Which means the world to me.

In the past, like for the last Rilo Kiley record, 'Under the Blacklight,' I wore exclusively hot pants because the themes in that record were the underbelly of Los Angeles.

My mother's records were formative for me, but when I became a teenager, I wanted to find songs that she wasn't hip to. She was so hip, though, that I had to go outside rock n' roll - so for about 10 years, I only listened to hip-hop, house and techno.

I think it's always an adjustment for me, but I do feel like, ultimately, I can kind of write anywhere. It just takes a second to get back in to the groove.

I love kids, but there's always time for them later. You can always adopt; you can have a puppy. The songs are my children.

I can parallel park pretty well - I'm a great driver.

I demo all of my songs on Garage Band, where I pretty much play everything - not very well, but I manage to hammer out a drum beat and a bass idea.

I'm constantly dodging people in L.A. There are some people I don't ever wanna see again, but if you live where you grew up, you're running into people constantly.

It really helps me to get into the character of the record when I have a designated look. It just really simplifies things for me.

When you're talking about your own music every day, listening to bands, going to festivals, you can kind of lose sight of your initial connection with music. Instrumental music - especially jazz - helps me refocus.

It's funny how a song can start in your mind, and then when it goes through all the filters, it ends up in a totally different spot.

When I first started touring, we had a crappy van, and we would all share rooms. So for many years as a grown adult woman, I would share a bed with a bandmate, whether it would be Jimmy Tamborello from the Postal Service or Pierre De Reeder from Rilo Kiley, just a pillow barrier between us sleeping on the same bed.

I was a big fan of 'Days of Our Lives' growing up.

I didn't know anything about music when I started a band. I barely knew how to play a guitar. I didn't know how to produce records. I learned how to play bass guitar and keyboards in Rilo Kiley. I picked up a lot from my collaborators.

I come from a duo, actually, quite literally. My parents are Linda and Eddie, and they had an act in Vegas called 'Love's Way.'