Amanda Palmer Quotes

I want to be happy. i want to make people happy. i do not need to be rich to do that. ~ Amanda Palmer

That night changed my life: I was finally experiencing, in person, the songs that had been the soundtrack of my life for the past few years, the lyric-images I'd memorized after hours of headphone-listening on walks to school, the words that had been direct-deposited into my heart though the channel of my ears
I was hearing them here, now, in a moment that would never exist again. ~ Amanda Palmer

The field of asking is fundamentally improvisational. It thrives not in the creation of rules and etiquette but in the smashing of that etiquette.
Which is to say: there are no rules.
Or, rather, there are plenty of rules, but they ask, on bended knees, to be broken. ~ Amanda Palmer

WHEN YOU CANNOT JOKE ABOUT THE DARKNESS OF LIFE, THAT'S WHEN THE DARKNESS TAKES OVER. ~ Amanda Palmer

I think you can't have this discussion and you can't have a discussion about feminism and the consciousness of the world without having a discussion about what has happened to men lately. They're holding the other side of the bag. ~ Amanda Palmer

My blog readership grew steadily as I started to dump more of my inner self onto the page. I ~ Amanda Palmer

Certain art hungers for context. ~ Amanda Palmer

Nobody ever sees me. Thank you. ~ Amanda Palmer

People had this idea about becoming rock stars packing stadiums instead of having the goal of becoming what musicians used to be in terms of how they would perform and connect people. ~ Amanda Palmer

Throughout my career, the fanbase has been like one big significant other to me, a thousand-headed friend with whom I have a real, committed partnership. I ~ Amanda Palmer

I've been in a recording studio enough times to know that it is not the best place to multitask. Doing a couple of takes of a song and running out to check your email to talk to someone about video production really is not good. ~ Amanda Palmer

When you connect with people, they want to help you. ~ Amanda Palmer

It's hard to work on an assembly line of broken hearts Not supposed to fix them, only strip and sell the parts ~ Amanda Palmer

How do we let people pay for music? ~ Amanda Palmer

I have never in my career embarked on a journey towards controversy. I have never deliberately set a flame. ~ Amanda Palmer

And I've already spent too much time Doing things I didn't want to So if I want to drink alone dressed like a pirate Or look like a dyke Or wear high heels and lipstick Or hide in a convent Or try to be mayor Or marry a writer Smoke crack and slash tires Make jokes you don't like Or paint ducks and retire You can bet your black ass that I'm going to. - from An Evening With Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer, 2013 ~ Amanda Palmer

I think the Internet really sussed things into perspective. Because twelve years ago, I could spend my days on writing and running my band and touring and making posters and practicing with my band and working on my vocals, but I didn't spend a large pie chart of my time sifting through criticism as well, and nowadays I do, and all female artists do, because to be able to promote your work, you need to live in those spaces. ~ Amanda Palmer

Sam was about to travel to Asia with her boyfriend and she was fretting about what her backers would think if she released some of her new songs while she was 'on vacation'. She was worried that posting pictures of herself sipping a Mai Tai was going to make her look like an asshole.

What does it matter? I asked her, where you are whether you're drinking a coffee, a Mai Tai or a bottle of water? I mean, aren't they paying for your songs so that you can... live? Doesn't living include wandering and collecting emotions and drinking a Mai Tai, not just sitting in a room writing songs without ever leaving the house?

I told Sam about another songwriter friend of mine, Kim Boekbinder, who runs her own direct support website through which her fans pay her monthly at levels from $5 to $1,000. She also has a running online wishlist of musical gear and costumes kindof like a wedding registry, to which her fans can contribute money anytime they want.

Kim had told me a few days before that she doesn't mind charging her backers during what she calls her 'staring at the wall time'. She thinks this is essential before she can write a new batch of songs. And her fans don't complain, they trust her process.

These are new forms of patronage, there are no rules and it's messy, the artists and the patrons they are making the rules as they go along, but whether these artists are using crowdfunding (which is basically, front me some money so I can ma ~ Amanda Palmer

You are not to blame,
The world's a viscous place,
So go on and think how you want,
You will not be alone in your thoughts,
Well you will but you won't in a way,
Cause a girl thought it too in a book that the library bought ~ Amanda Palmer

We are human and our nature is to air. ~ Amanda Palmer

This is how a creative human works. Collecting, connecting, sharing. ~ Amanda Palmer

I'm still trying to express my truth, my place in the world, my belief. ~ Amanda Palmer

He'd believed for a long time, deep down, that people didn't actually fall in love. That they were all faking it. ~ Amanda Palmer

Anthony once told me: It isn't what you say to people, it's more important what you do with them. It's less important what you do with them than the way you're with them. ~ Amanda Palmer

This impulse to connect the dots - and to share what you've connected - is the urge that makes you an artist. If ~ Amanda Palmer

For real? I dropped my cell phone in a puddle this morning, couldn't find my keys, can't hold down a relationship, and here I am clutching a sharp knife about to cut someone's head open. And they could die. Who is letting me do this? This is BULLSHIT. ~ Amanda Palmer

In other words, let's give our young women the right weapons to fight with as they charge naked into battle, instead of ordering them to get back in the house and put some goddamn clothes on. ~ Amanda Palmer

There's a huge cloud of shame around art and business being seen as bedfellows. ~ Amanda Palmer

As I moved through my life as a statue and later as a musician, I started to understand. There's a difference between wanting to be looked at and wanting to be seen. ~ Amanda Palmer

Before I saw your talk, I always thought of street performers as beggars. ~ Amanda Palmer

I think one of the greatest gifts you can give to someone is just access to the possibility of freedom that you don't have to be totally depressed and enslaved by your own environment. ~ Amanda Palmer

The Fraud Police are the imaginary, terrifying force of 'real' grown-ups who you believe - at some subconscious level - are going to come knocking on your door in the middle of the night, saying:
We've been watching you, and we have evidence that you have NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING. You stand accused of the crime of completely winging it, you are guilty of making shit up as you go along, you do not actually deserve your job, we are taking everything away and we are TELLING EVERYBODY. ~ Amanda Palmer

There's no "correct path" to becoming a real artist. You might think you'll gain legitimacy by going to art school, getting published, getting signed to a record label. But it's all bullshit, and it's all in your head. You're an artist when you say you are. And you're a good artist when you make somebody else experience or feel something deep or unexpected. ~ Amanda Palmer

I think a good role model has to be sexy. Real, empowered, self-possessed women are sexy. When you're really in control of your choices, your mood, your body, and your opinions, people find you sexy. ~ Amanda Palmer

I hate it when people don't spend the night. ~ Amanda Palmer

I feel that part of my life's artwork is creatively dealing with all this negativity and anger and rage and hatred coming from whatever corners it's coming from and somehow manifesting all of that anger into something positive, which is such a hard job. ~ Amanda Palmer

You can't ask authentically and gracefully without truly being able to accept "No" for an answer. Because if you're not truly willing to accept "No" for an answer, you're not really asking, you're demanding  -  you're begging. At least, that's how I've come to understand asking. ~ Amanda Palmer

The challenge in my life really is keeping the balance between feeling creatively energized and fulfilled without feeling overwhelmed and like I'm in the middle of a battlefield. ~ Amanda Palmer

I get so many ideas for songs, but I'm so seldom disciplined enough to sit down and crank them out. ~ Amanda Palmer

I suppose I'm happy to sell my time and energy, but I'm not happy to sell my initial creative time. ~ Amanda Palmer

Asking for help with shame says:
You have the power over me.
Asking with condescension says:
I have the power over you.
But asking for help with gratitude says:
We have the power to help each other. ~ Amanda Palmer

I think performance art comes from a simple place of wanting to express things beyond just sound. ~ Amanda Palmer

If you want the world to pay for projects, you have to be able to display why you're worthy. ~ Amanda Palmer

Here's the thing: all of us come from some place of wanting to be seen, understood, accepted, connected. Every single one of us wants to be believed. Artists are often just ... louder about it. ~ Amanda Palmer

And I wonder does everyone else live this way
a succession of tests
a triumphant success
each time I'm still intact at the end of the day ~ Amanda Palmer

i know which side of the train i was on today. ~ Amanda Palmer

My number-one goal is to never feel like I'm strictly defining myself. The minute I feel like I'm doing that as anything - as theatrical, as feminist, as songwriter - I feel like the minute I name it, I'm stuck in a box. ~ Amanda Palmer

In some way, my fundamental feeling about music is that it's impossible to put a price tag on it. Human beings made music before they made a lot of other things, including tools. ~ Amanda Palmer

I suffer mornings most of all
I feel so powerless and small
By ten o'clock I'm back in bed
Fighting the jury in my head ~ Amanda Palmer

Bands like Nirvana had theatrical sensibilities, playing with image, challenging assumptions people were making about them, the apex being Kurt Cobain in a dress to make a point. ~ Amanda Palmer

Thank God my best friend's a therapist. ~ Amanda Palmer

The pattern's laid out on the bed
With dozens of colors of thread
But you've got the needle
I guess that's the point in the end ~ Amanda Palmer

I wanted to feel like I could extend someone else's joy and not crush it, and that is the giant paradox nowadays of being a powerful woman: you want to live in a space of compassion and helpfulness and joy and expression, and the world is standing there, pointing the finger at you and telling you that you're greedy and domineering and attention-grabbing, and all you can do is shrug and just say, "Hopefully, someone out there understands and isn't misinterpreting." ~ Amanda Palmer

To erase the possibility of empathy is to erase the possibility of understanding.
To erase the possibility of empathy is also to erase the possibility of art. Theater, fiction, horror stories, love stories. This is what art does. Good or bad, it imagines the insides, the heart of the other, whether that heart is full of light or trapped in darkness. ~ Amanda Palmer

Miley Cyrus is about making money. Amanda Palmer is about making art. ~ Eddi Reader

WHO'S GOT A TAMPON? I JUST GOT MY PERIOD, I will announce loudly to nobody in particular in a women's bathroom in a San Francisco restaurant, or to a co-ed dressing room of a music festival in Prague, or to the unsuspecting gatherers in a kitchen at a party in Sydney, Munich, or Cincinnati. Invariably, across the world, I have seen and heard the rustling of female hands through backpacks and purses, until the triumphant moment when a stranger fishes one out with a kind smile. No money is ever exchanged. The unspoken universal understanding is: Today, it is my turn to take the tampon. Tomorrow, it shall be yours. There is a constant, karmic tampon circle. It also exists, I've found, with Kleenex, cigarettes, and ballpoint pens. ~ Amanda Palmer

Make me famous, okay? he said, brightly. Maybe I'll finally get some free coffee around here. ~ Amanda Palmer

How do we create a world in which people don't think of art just as a product, but as a relationship? ~ Amanda Palmer

When you're an artist, nobody ever tells you or hits you with the magic wand of legitimacy. You have to hit your own head with your own handmade wand. And you feel stupid doing it. ~ Amanda Palmer

Twitter fascinates me because it's real. It feels kind of unreal, but it makes very real things happen. ~ Amanda Palmer

We've been watching you, and we have evidence that you have NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING. You ~ Amanda Palmer

When the day comes, I'll get up at his funeral and break a giant stick. Then I'll head to a bar and spend the rest of the night drinking, laughing, crying... and waiting to die. Somebody bring a stick. - Amanda Palmer New York City June 26th, 2012 ~ C. Anthony Martignetti

There was a dance that everyone was doing that was heavily skewed with the power in one direction, but the dance was basically working, and then the dance got really disrupted with the first wave of feminism, and nobody found their footing yet - not the guys, not the women. ~ Amanda Palmer

Your songs are good, Amanda. And I'm not just saying that. I stared at him in disbelief. I get given a lot of music, he continued. It's like that on the road, you know, we get handed mountains of demo tapes every night. And they're, you know, not always good. Your songs are good. I don't know what your plans are. But I hope you keep going. I just wanted to say that. ~ Amanda Palmer

Listening fast, and caring immediately, is a skill in itself. ~ Amanda Palmer

When you trust people to help you, they often do. ~ Amanda Palmer

It's fine for people to say, "If you can't stand the heat and if you can't stand the criticism, then just don't use the Internet"; unfortunately, that is not an option. The Internet is where we make our living and where we make our work, especially if we're independents and we cannot afford to not engage, because that's where our business is driving from. It's just not an option. ~ Amanda Palmer

And when you're afraid of someone's judgment, you can't connect with them. You're too preoccupied with the task of impressing them. ~ Amanda Palmer

There's really no honor in proving that you can carry the entire load on your own shoulders. And ... it's lonely ~ Amanda Palmer

I knew what I needed, but asking for specific emotional things felt impossible and obnoxious. He was a human being. He should just instinctively know how to take care of an emotionally exhausted, sick, post-abortion wife. He ought to just know, I thought. I shouldn't have to fucking ask. ~ Amanda Palmer

I am bigger on the inside
But you have to come inside to see me ~ Amanda Palmer

If you're going to make work and you're going to write and you're going to put yourself out there and perform, you will be belittled, you will be insulted, you will be called a standard collection of names, you will be accused, and you just have to stand there and continue to work and find a way to not let those things poison you. ~ Amanda Palmer

Almost every important human encounter boils down to the act, and the art, of asking. ~ Amanda Palmer

I maintain couchsurfing and crowdsurfing are basically the same thing - you're falling into the audience and you're trusting each other. ~ Amanda Palmer

American culture in particular has instilled in us the bizarre notion that to ask for help amounts to an admission of failure. But some of the most powerful, successful, admired people in the world seem, to me, to have something in common: they ask constantly, creatively, compassionately, and gracefully. And to be sure: when you ask, there's always the possibility of a no on the other side of the request. If we don't allow for that no, we're not actually asking, we're either begging or demanding. But it is the fear of the no that keeps so many of our mouths sewn tightly shut. ~ Amanda Palmer

We all got used to living in the cloud of unknowing. ~ Amanda Palmer

I was just a very dark kid. My family was complicated. ~ Amanda Palmer

A farmer is sitting on his porch in a chair, hanging out.
A friend walks up to the porch to say hello, and hears an awful yelping, squealing sound coming from inside the house.
"What's that terrifyin' sound?" asks the friend.
"It's my dog," said the farmer. "He's sittin' on a nail."
"Why doesn't he just sit up and get off it?" asks the friend.
The farmer deliberates on this and replies:
"Doesn't hurt enough yet. ~ Amanda Palmer

I never wanted to grow a thicker skin; I felt a real sense of pride in my thin skin, and in a weird way, I still do, because it's my thin skin that allows me to empathize with other people. It's the thing that allows me to create vulnerable art. It's the thing that allows me to create other feelings and make songs that actually grab people and touch people. I feel like I've spent my life fighting that thicker skin because I don't want to become an embittered asshole. ~ Amanda Palmer

On many days, harder than the act of making the art itself is the act of sharing it and living in a culture that you know is built to tear you down. ~ Amanda Palmer

The perfect tools aren't going to help us if we can't face each other and give and receive fearlessly, but more important, to ask without shame. ~ Amanda Palmer

I still get laughed at but it doesn't bother me,
I'm just so glad to hear laughter around me. ~ Amanda Palmer

I see everybody arguing about what the value of music should be instead of what I think the bigger conversation is, which is that music has value, it's subjective and we're moving to a new era where the audience is taking more responsibility for supporting artists at whatever level. ~ Amanda Palmer

Art is food for the soul, and an artistic climate is a healthy climate because it breeds empathy. ~ Amanda Palmer

it's the closest thing I have to church. ~ Amanda Palmer

I think to say that meditation is helpful to artists is true and it's great, but it's also essentially helpful to any kind of process of, just, life. ~ Amanda Palmer

Everybody out there is winging it to some degree, of this we can be pretty sure. ~ Amanda Palmer

I've always been a creative workaholic. I have never had a period of my life where I didn't have at least half a dozen projects going on at once. ~ Amanda Palmer

We have the power to help each other. ~ Amanda Palmer

At the same yoga retreat, we stood and faced each other in pairs, really looking at each other from a close distance. We were told to simply BE with the other person, maintaining eye contact, with no social gestures like laughing, smiling, or winking to put ourselves at ease.
Grown women and men cried. Really and truly sobbed.
When we were finished with the exercise, we talked about how it had felt. The thread echoed again and again: many people had never felt so *seen* by another person. Seen without walls, without judgment ... just seen, acknowledged, accepted. The experience was
for so many painfully rare. ~ Amanda Palmer

If we can repair things emotionally, a lot of other things would follow. ~ Amanda Palmer

It's hard enough to give fearlessly, and it's even harder to receive fearlessly.
But within that exchange lies the hardest thing of all:
To ask. Without shame.
And to accept the help that people offer.
Not to force them.
Just to let them. ~ Amanda Palmer

When we really see each other, we want to help each other. ~ Amanda Palmer

In both the art and the business worlds, the difference between the amateurs and the professionals is simple: The professionals know they're winging it. The amateurs pretend they're not. ~ Amanda Palmer

Our first job in life is to recognize the gifts we've already got, take the donuts that show up while we cultivate and use those gifts, and then turn around and share those gifts - sometimes in the form of money, sometimes time, sometimes love - back into the puzzle of the world. Our second job is to accept where we are in the puzzle at each moment. ~ Amanda Palmer

You are an artist when you make someone feel something deep and unexpected. ~ Amanda Palmer

Every album is just a greatest hits of whatever songs are on a pile when I go in to make a record. ~ Amanda Palmer

Given the opportunity, some small consistent portion of the population will happily pay for art. ~ Amanda Palmer

Meditation, especially for people who don't know very much about it and think it's this very hippy dippy thing, can really be powerful, terrifying even, as it lifts the rug up on your subconscious and the dust comes flying out. ~ Amanda Palmer

Life as it should be: all friends, all art, all music, all love, all the time. ~ Amanda Palmer