Florence Welch Quotes

Hands up if you’re ready to do something you’ll regret this weekend. Go forth! You have my blessing.

It's always darkness before the dawn.

If you asked me to go back to being 14 or 15, I couldn't - it was a terrifying time. I was so awkward in my own skin. I used to hide behind my hair because I was so ridiculously self-conscious.

I feel a responsibility to the fans who have paid to see me and I want to give as good a show as I possibly can.

Look, if Givenchy is going to lend you a dress, I'm not going to turn it down. I would wear that dress to just go out and buy a pint of milk if they would lend it to me.

It's hard to dance with a devil on your back, So shake him off...

I can't just have one painting - I need to cover the wall in paintings. It's the same with my music. I want to mix everything together to create more.

I've always been a bit of a decorator. I think if I wasn't a singer I'd probably be in stage setting or interior design or something. I like clutter and I'm quite visually greedy. I can't have things to be plain; I have to have things looking interesting maybe I'm just a frustrated interior designer stuck in a singing career.

It was a complete dream to work with David LaChapelle. I collected his books as a teenager, and I fantasised that he would direct the video for 'Spectrum' from the moment the song was written. I still can't believe it actually happened, 
and I'm completely overjoyed that he felt such a connection with the song.

Music to me is so internal. It's physical and it's emotional. Whereas fashion is so much about the external that it's almost like a break. It's not inner turmoil. It's total escapism.

I'm a light sleeper. I've never been one of those people who can put their head down and suddenly everything disappears. Nighttime is the time I get most scared, anxious or worried. In those darker moments before waking or sleeping is when I feel most, I don't know, I can turn on myself, and my imagination can take me dark places.

I think I should get a bigger between-the-song persona, so then I'm not wandering around the stage like some mad old auntie that's saying hello to people and falling over.

It’s good to be vulnerable in amongst the grandeur; you shouldn’t lose that sense of intimacy and vulnerability with people.

At the beginning of my career I was going through a really weird phase of dressing in boys clothes. I would only wear one American Apparel T-shirt and shorts and brogues the whole year round. Not the same T-shirt, obviously, but one style of American Apparel T-shirt. I think I was going through a tomboy stage.

I think I just have a problem generally in life of wanting more of everything - more emotion, more drama, more glitz.

Bono told me how to dance in high heels and he also told me about U2's Glastonbury performance and how everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong, including him ripping his trousers on stage. I think he was lunging and his trousers ripped! He was telling me how he had to find a new way of performing that didn't involve moving.

Where's my heart at? Aw. Um, in my chest. I think it's in there - on the right hand side. Sometimes it's in my mouth and sometimes I can feel it in my stomach, when I get really nervous. So it's pretty physical.

I love performing outside because it's as if the heavens are open and the elements become part of the stage show as well - you know, the wind and the rain and the thunder. It's almost as if there's a sense of invocation in performance.

Being heartbroken is like having this really horrible freedom. You can be selfish with your thoughts, which can lead to manic creativity, but at the same time you're just really miserable.

I've spent a lot of time in tiny venues in the way that I got my record deal and got my name out there just performing live. I was literally performing my songs in all kinds of different ways with different guitarists, and I didn't have an album up online or anything. It's been a lot of work; it definitely hasn't been a sudden explosion into fame.

I used to dress like an eight-year-old boy. Traveling has inspired me to be more experimental.

I want my music to sound like throwing yourself out of a tree, or off a tall building, or as if you’re being sucked down into the ocean and you can’t breathe… It’s something overwhelming and all-encompassing that fills you up, and you’re either going to explode with it, or you’re just going to disappear.

When you're heartbroken, you're at your most creative - you have to channel all your energies into something else to not think about it. Contentment is a creativity killer, but don't worry - I'm very capable of making myself discontented.

I always wanted to sound like a man, like Jeff Buckley or Tom Waits.

The stage is the place I feel comfortable - it's almost as if real life is where I feel most nervous. Conversations are a lot more nerve-wracking.

But I was always much more interested in reading fashion magazines than I was music magazines when I was a teenager. Just that sense of romanticism and escapism and the dream of it has always been quite alluring to me, as well as that sense of becoming a character through clothes.

Growing up, I always wanted to be in punk bands, so I'm really enjoying the harder, heavier element. It's always been my dream to have people moshing at my gig, kind of that really feral element of the music coming out more. I love crowd-surfing.

I've got some incredible fans actually - so loyal and they make me card »">birthday cards and Christmas cards. I got this package of poems and artwork based around the songs. They've got this thing called 'Floetry' where they all have to put in artwork. They've set up their own competitions and stuff which is kind of amazing.

I'm pretty obsessed with Stevie Nicks from her style to her voice. I like watching her on YouTube and her old performances, the way she moves and everything.

A lot of the songs on the new album are about imaginary things, things that you can't touch - ghosts and rumors, my dead grandmother, things visiting you in a dream.

Excitable, easily distracted, sometimes vacant, prone to gloominess and also extreme euphoria; I can’t be generous with time, but I try to be generous with affection. I’m really lucky to be able to be in some of these situations and it feels really nice to be able to take people along with me for the ride. Oh, and I’m a pain in the ass as well.

I was having a conversation with my father and he was talking about this thing - strangeness and charm. It's actually the name of the two smallest particles that there are when you split the atom, so I wrote a song around it. I even managed to fit the word 'hydrogen' in there. Isn't that a nice thing for scientists to call them though?

I look really odd in jeans and a hoodie - it doesn't feel or seem right.

Everything has such order and everyone is so focused on doing what they're doing that no one ever pays attention to you spinning and dancing around supermarkets. It's something you find in places like supermarkets and airports, where everything is really ordered. There's something about those places that makes you feel really anonymous.

I love Lady Gaga and I love Katy Perry and R&B and rap music... I love big, American pop music.

There's such an extreme feeling to be in love, especially in quite an emotionally destructive relationship, where you're both kind of really bad for each other, but you love each other so much. Those extreme emotions, I think, can only be described with extreme imagery.

Having a soul, they say, is like taking sadness and turning it into something beautiful.

I tend to lose myself in the moment. I’m not very good at holding back. I don’t know how to do this without feeling everything. My emotions are the tool I use to perform.

I can’t worry too much about the everyday things. Otherwise I’d lose touch with my own world, that helps me as an artist, but it’s frustrating for the people around me. I’m vaguely functional, but there’s always something slightly off.

I can't ever seem to shake the feeling that when things are really good it essentially means that things are going to go really bad. When I feel calm and settled, there is always an underlying feeling of impending doom... I don't think that it's healthy.

You know, people always ask, 'What are you like offstage?' And I always say, 'Well, I'm completely normal and mellow.'

I'm obsessed with choirs, and always have been, because of that sense of overwhelming vocals.

I've got quite a vivid imagination and I'm easily overwhelmed by sensations and things that are beautiful or scary. I don't think I've ever seen a ghost - I think I'm probably haunted by my own ghosts than real ones.

I made music with my friend, who we called Isabella Machine to which I was Florence Robot. When I was about an hour away from my first gig, I still didn't have a name, so I thought 'Okay, I'll be Florence Robot/Isa Machine', before realising that name was so long it'd drive me mad.

I wanted to be a witch when I was a kid. I was obsessed with witchcraft. At school, me and my two friends had these spell books; I always wanted a more magical reality. I had a little shrine at home and I did a spell to try and make the boy in the other class fall in love with me.

You can forget anything, and actually being a part of a crowd, of a group, can itself be freeing.

I like a house party and fancy dress, a big fan of fancy dress, like dress up, costume parties.

I am obsessed with the whole Victoriana thing, the whole Jack the Ripper London era, the grayness of it, the haunted feeling of it, all ancient and bloody.