Neko Case Quotes

There's no grand excellence to it. In my experience it was just almost the gulaggy boringness of it that'll kill you. You're just in this murk. And you're with other humans, but you lose all your human skills and it's just like you're in this plastic bag and you can't quite connect with people. You lose your ability to transmit electricity or something, and to receive it.

If you want to be noticed as a drop of water, why would you move to the ocean?

I think I've kind of been mistaken for somebody who's trying to be a spokesperson for animal rights, and the fact is I'm not qualified to be a spokesperson. I am passionate about it, but I'm not trying to make other people do what I do.

Making music makes me feel vulnerable in the best possible way. It gives me a feeling of balance.

It's like sometimes, you can just lay back and it takes the pressure off of you.

If I could ever be on a Missy Elliott record, I could then die. Missy Elliott, Mary J. Blige - I love hearing them interviewed, I love the way they talk about their art. They're very self-assured, they're funny, they're inviting. I love it.

I like to think that I'm not old yet.

I grew up with lots of animals and I related more to them than I did to people. I feel a lot of empathy for them.

Everyone has to kind of fend for themselves.

You can't just play the same thing, over and over again.

What drug will keep night from coming?

I don't know anybody who doesn't hate being called alt.country. It just sounds like a website. I don't mind being called Americana, I don't mind being called country noir, or independent country is fine, but the words alt.country make me insane.

I get outside a lot. I am a huge champion of physical activity. It's so important.

I'm too small for the universe to revolve around me. It is a huge relief!

There's not like a science to it, necessarily, but I'm also the kind of person who spends a long time in the studio. I will spend my entire advance just getting it done, which is probably stupid, but I don't have extravagant taste. I mean, I paid for it, so there you go. Why not? The recording process is also very fun.

I just really dig feeling subservient to nature. It brings me a peace and calm. Kind of like a Faustian thing, I think.

The relationship of humans to nature. We are sadly divorced from it.

I'm not very interesting. Birds are interesting. I could stand there lip-synching all day long, but it would feel funny, and people would be able to tell. I'm not a good actress.

I have this typical Ukrainian face. Even people who know my music don't recognize me most of the time, thank God.

When you live in a lot of places, you can't help but have them become part of you. Technically, I am a Southerner, but I did not grow up in the South. So I'm a Southerner by accident, but a Washingtonian.

Sounds like to have space sometimes. It's good to give yourself a variety, or you just fatigue your ear. Like if somebody sings in the same register all the time, or if it's got the same feel the whole way through, I just find I get fatigued, so it's nice to break it up.

I really wanted to find a piano for the farm house. There were so many free pianos on Craigslist, I thought, 'Let's get as many free pianos as we can and stick them all in the barn.' I got eight in a short period of time, only six of which were tunable, but it's still quite funny.

I tried to have more than one emotion on the record.

There's just kind of a sweetness about Canadians. Americans are a little more pushy, I mean, in a way that I enjoy - they're basically pushy because of their enthusiasm - we're a lot clumsier than other people.

I try not to be overly literal. When I'm writing songs, I write down a lot of words, and then I try to simplify it. I like to give people hints or words that make visual pictures for them.

I don't think it's important for everyone necessarily, and I totally respect that because everyone writes differently.

I think I have a lot of empathy for animals and nature in general. Those things just make me comfortable. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, around a lot of animals. I feel for them.

The Bible tries to make humans not animals the whole time. I think it's a bit of a mistake.

I try to think of the songs as little movies. They're always pretty visual to me. I can always sort of see them. I don't always know what the end result is going to be, and I don't know exactly what it's going to sound like, but I can kinda see them.

I want to get away from the social vampires in Tucson. The people who have no lives of their own and meet me and know who I am and feel entitled to say negative things. I have good friends here, especially in the bands. But a lot of it is just like high school.

I didn't want to be the girl who posed in 'Playboy' and then - by the way - made some music.

I would be a huge hypocrite if I didn't tell you that at one time in my life I thought the way that you made music was you got on a major label and you got famous.

When you're making records, you develop, and so you hear the things you want to move away from. It stings a little, but you know, you gotta own it too. You've got to just go, "You know, I wasn't afraid to learn in front of people, so I give myself a little credit for not being afraid of anything."

Country music is completely punk-rock. It's the original punk-rock.

We shouldn't censor ourselves based on the weak idea of "looking cool." It's such a waste of potential awesomeness.

I just want to make stories. They don't have to have a moral or a reason. There might be some mild cautionary notes, but they're not moral. They don't impart any Judeo-Christian ethic of any kind.

The men who have gotten women pregnant need to be accountable if we are. If we are going to jail, the men are coming too. Religious rhetoric will bite its own ass trying to nail only women in a two-person process.

I should have been an abortion. The only reason I wasn't was that my father was a Christian.

People get strange about whether you've written your own songs, which seems really stupid considering that, especially in Country Music, it's about oral tradition and passing things on and the songs weren't meant to be played by one person and then forgotten.