Regina Spektor Quotes

I just like being all over the place and writing whatever comes to mind. Having the tools? It's such a gift.

I always have kind of a few books going at the same time.

Songs kind of live in a timeless place for me, and since I make records I dunno, about every two-and-a-half to three years or something like that, it's just not enough to put all the songs that I have, no matter how much I put.

I've been thinking a lot about space. It was one of those slow-motion realisations how little we are, how far we are from everything else in our solar system. This idea of distance started kind of haunting me. How do you go forth and accomplish things but not end up leaving everything you started out with in the dust?

A man destined to hang can never drown

I met this wonderful guy who owned an old pub near the Eiffel Tower called Malone's (he's French but it's an Irish name). He had a cellar with a piano and told me I could use it whenever I wanted to. I played lots of gigs down there. When I came back I played a show at the Knitting Factory.

I've got a perfect body, 'cause my eyelashes catch my sweat

Maybe one day you'll understand I don't want nothing more than to sweetly hold your hand.

No one's laughing at God -We're all laughing with God.

You're using your headphones to drown out your mind

The world that has made us can no longer contain us

Tomorrow you might get a phone call about something wonderful and you might get a phone call about something terrible.

I would really hate it if I could call up Kafka or Hemingway or Salinger and any question I could throw at them they would have an answer. That's the magic when you read or hear something wonderful - there's no one that has all the answers.

If somebody wanted to go and find songs of mine to fill an iPod, that aren't on any records. They could probably find dozens of songs besides the ones that are on records.

We're trying to be faithful but we're cheating, cheating, cheating

I also don't like to make really big records, because I feel then that the songs don't get enough space to be themselves, so I would never want to make a record that's like seventeen songs.

I knew all this Beatles music. I knew the songs phonetically. It was like my whole experience of that music was out of focus, and somebody put the perfect glasses on me, and all of a sudden I could see everything.

Love is the answer to a question that I have forgotten

And people are just people, They shouldn't make you nervous. The world is everlasting, It's coming and it's going.

I don't kiss losers and I don't kiss winners, and I don't fight for honor 'cause we all are born sinners

Even if you're an observer of a story that you yourself made up, you're still very much connected to it. You love it and feel it, no less than somebody's who's writing from their direct 'I' or 'me.' I'm just so much more interesting in stories than confessions.

Tried to head in the general direction of the bathroom/
The truest room in the whole damn house.

I used to be such a militant city-ist, but more and more I've seen forests and nature and oceans, and I don't know any more if this is the awesomest way to live.

I'm the hero of this story, I don't need to be saved

It's a real gift to be able to have the works of brilliant, great people to learn from and build from. It gives you so much more to draw on, and then you don't have to be all about three-chord pop songs. I don't really like that kind of writing.

[A]s soon as you try and take a song from your mind into piano and voice and into the real world, something gets lost and it's like a moment where, in that moment you forget how it was and it's this new way. And then when you make a record, even those ideas that you had, then those get all turned and changed. So in the end, I think, it just becomes it's own thing and really I think a song could be recorded a million different ways and so what my records are, it just happened like that, but it's not like, this is how I planned it from the very beginning because I have no idea, I can't remember.

I've done that kind of stuff in records, where you start going back and you want to just redo everything, destroy everything, because you think it all sucks and you can do it better.

The only thing they really get to pick is the single. But I get to pick the producer, the songs on the record, the final masters, the artwork. Basically, I hand them a record.

And the history books forgot about us, and the bible didn't mention us

I started to write before I went to SUNY Purchase music conservatory. As an audition I submitted what I now think are really awful songs, but I guess they saw something in them.

I'd always wanted to work in the studio and experiment with sounds. Things that I'm really influenced by and that I love are like The Beatles and Radiohead, and all those records by bands whose music is really involved.

I figured, 'If I ever get offered a chance to sign a deal, I'll only do it if I got to do it how I want.' So my contract is structured in such a way that I'm really protected.

It's not like I have all the answers.

I'm just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh lord please don't let me be misunderstood.

I'm walking through the city
Like a drunk, but not
With my slip showing a little
Like a drunk, but not
And I am one of your people
But the cars don't stop
And I am one of your people
But the cars don't stop

When you're near books, amazing things happen. They can call to you just by being in the same space as you. It can be a feeling, the color or texture of a cover, or the way it somehow sets itself apart from its neighbors and asks you to open it. Then comes the crack of the spine, the random, or not-so-random-at-all page you open to, and finally the completely surprising and unexpected words you read. In that moment, you are the only person in the world holding that book and touching its pages. You can stand there for an hour and keep reading--or put it back and start again.

That can't happen of a screen. Other wonderful things can, but not that. And moments like those--of time stopping, eyes searching and minds dreaming--are rare and important in our fast-paced lives. We must protect the possibility of them.

Good luck to us!

Maybe I am skipping over the city and going from very personal things to the world, from internal experience to giant, far-away-from-space experience.

We keep on burying our dead/
We keep on planting their bones in the ground/
But they won't grow/
The sun doesn't help/
The rain doesn't help.

This is how it works
You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath
No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart
Pumping someone else's blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don't get harmed
But even if it does
You'll just do it all again

Today we're younger than we're ever gonna be

You're part of the human fabric of experience. You don't have to have cancer to write about cancer. You don't have to have somebody close to you die to understand what death is. Definitely, the more you live, the more experiences fall into your spectrum. As a writer, you must have been told: Write about what you know. But Kafka didn't. Gogol didn't. Did Shakespeare write only what he knew? Our own selves are limitless. And our capacity for empathy is giant.

This is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart
Pumping someone else's blood.

Don't tell your secrets to anyone/
Because ideas are vulnerable/
As soon as you say your idea out loud/
Then it can go and live on its own/
And you will miss it oh so much/
And you will wait for its return/
And you will wish it were your own/
But ideas that left never come back home.

Pickle jars are just pickle jars, and pickles are just pickles.