Joanna Newsom Quotes

It's valid that the Strokes and the Pleased have been influenced by some of the same bands. But it's invalid in the sense that we listen to the Strokes and try to sounds like them. I think that they are a good band.

I fought angrily against seeing particular types of poetic organization because it seemed awful to see my own life and these actual events in that way. But when you put forth an intention into the universe to speak a certain truth and narrate a certain period of your life, you start to see the sorts of symmetries that you are not usually supposed to be able to see until you are on your deathbed and your life flashes before your eyes. And you see exactly why everything happened. And even the most painful things you've ever been through can seem unbearably beautiful.

I am always trying to write.

I've been unaware of how people react to the instrument. People have ideas of what a harp is supposed to sound like, and a lot of them are negative ideas.

My voice in combination with the harp - which, by the way, I use because I've played it my entire life, not to make some statement about the harp - somehow has ... coloured people's interpretations of the music and projected an idea of childlike or fairytale quality or innocence. Which sometimes prevents people from listening to the songs the way I would like them to be listened to.

I can understand someone not liking the voice or the songs.

I definitely don't subscribe to the theory that more instruments, or more vocal tracks, harmony, or double tracking the voice, is a good thing. People do their early albums very stripped down, then each album becomes bloated.

I had known that people would probably have strange reactions to my voice, because I have kind of an unwieldy, difficult voice, but I never thought that anybody would have a problem with the harp. I just assumed ... C'mon, it's a beautiful instrument.

We deserve to know light. And grow evermore lighter and lighter.

Among the responsibilities of any writer is that, no matter what else, they know what they mean. So, even if no one else knows what you're talking about, you do. The listener can sense that, even if they don't get the literal meaning. The faith that they place in the clues and the connections and the secrets of the lyrics is of the utmost importance.

I did spend a year in high school being obsessed with Fleetwood Mac.

I didn't really know a lot of the history when I was younger. I didn't realize that the harp is coded in such a specific way in musical circles. It's kind of this society instrument because of its history as a young woman's parlor instrument.

All my life, I've felt as though
I'm inside a beautiful memory, replaying
with the sound turned down low.

Well, yeah, I wanted to resist the urge to thicken everything up with instrumentation, because I just felt like I was interested in seeing how the songs did on their own.

I have writing songs on my own for about six years.

The moment of your greatest joy sustains:
Not axe nor hammer
Tumor, tremor
Can take it away, and it remains
It remains

We are blessed and sustained by what is not said

I never thought people would be mortally offended by the sounds I was making.

You should listen to a lot of different music.

I didn't sing for years and years, but I started playing harp when I was maybe 9 or 10. I had actually wanted to play for years leading up to that, but no teacher in our little town would take me on as a student, because I was too young.

Last week, our picture window
Produced a half-word,
Heavy and hollow,
Hit by a brown bird.
We stood and watched her gape like a rattlesnake
And pant and labor over every intake.
I said a sort of prayer for some rare grace,
Then thought i ought to take her to a higher place.
Said, dog nor vulture nor cat shall toy with you,
And though you die, bird, you will have a fine view.

It broke my heart when I learned the moon had been passing the sun's light off as its own.

The so-called positive press has in some ways been more difficult to swallow than the negative.

And all that we built, and all that we breathed And all that we spilled or pulled up like weeds Is piled up in back and it burns irrevocably And we spoke up in turns 'til the silence crept over me.

I have a recording that I did of instrumental songs.

I recorded harp first or singing first. I recorded it all together. Part of the reason is that I don't know how to play the songs without also singing. I forget how they progress. I don't think that any of them are verse, chorus, verse, and so on. They are not simple.

I played piano for about two years when I was a kid. I didn't play long enough to be really great.

What a woman does is open doors. And it is not a question of locking or unlocking.

I wasn't interested in writing music that wasn't beautiful for me to listen to.

The very first Walnut Whales recording was recorded just a few weeks after I had started singing, out of the blue, started singing. And the voice, you can hear how uncomfortable I am with it, and how terrified I am with it.

I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilight
No I was all horns and thorns sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright.

I am consciously trying not to make it sound Celtic or African.

The fire breather is beneath the clover, and beneath his breathing there is cold clay forever

The thing that I was experiencing and dwelling on the entire time is that there are so many things that are not OK and that will never be OK again. But there's also so many things that are OK and good that sometimes it makes you crumple over with being alive. We are allowed such an insane depth of beauty and enjoyment in this lifetime. It's what my dad talks about sometimes. He says the only way that he knows there's a God is that there's so much gratuitous joy in this life. And that's his only proof. There's so many joys that do not assist in the propagation of the race or self-preservation. There's no point whatsoever. They are so excessively, mind-bogglingly joy-producing that they distract from the very functions that are supposed to promote human life. They can leave you stupefied, monastic, not productive in any way, shape or form. And those joys are there and they are unflagging and they are ever-growing. And still there are these things that you will never be able to feel OK about–unbearably awful, sad, ugly, unfair things.

People are often afraid for me. They think that I am going to break. I can make it through a set.