Florence Welch Quotes

The music is so euphoric,as a way of battling the words. It’s like an exorcism, beating it out with drums, shake this demon out, it’s so visceral because the melancholy has to be drummed out. I can’t let it sit inside me.

I've been thinking about songwriting more in terms of playing it live, and how it will sound as a band.

I try to write lyrics so that they won't age, which sort of leaves you with the big subjects like death and love and sex and violence.

I try to maintain a healthy dose of daydreaming, to remain sane.

It's very flattering when you look into the crowd and people have made an effort and dressed in your style.

I guess in order to say something to one person, I have to sing it to a couple of thousand. It doesn't make for healthy relationships.

All the words are already there when you're singing onstage, it's fantastic. You can lose yourself in what you've created. You're controlling this freedom.

I like to keep my issues drawn, it's always darkest before the dawn.

I've just never been a tracksuit-wearer.

If you do something with your whole heart and it's a mistake, you can live with that.

On stage, you can use your emotions. It's the place where you can channel them. They have a purpose.

Maybe in music you're making an auditory environment and maybe you change your environment around you to suit your own way.

My visual landscape as a child was the inside of a lot of these old churches. And the Baroque drama of the things was what I was first engaging with artwise. I'm much more attracted to the aesthetic of religious iconography than the actual religious side. The passion and the blood and the violence and the gaudy side of it I find really fascinating.

The Teenage Cancer Trust does incredible work supporting and caring for teenagers and young adults with cancer, and it's a cause that is really close to me and my family.

I dyed my hair red when I was ten and when I was 11 - in my goth period - I dyed it black and I was really into witchcraft. I made mini shrines in my bedroom with candles and tried to cast spells to make the boy in the next class fall in love with me. I don't think he did.

Touring, and being in a band, it's almost like the other stuff, the other parts of life, get put on hold.

My style of playing is more enthusiasm and instinct than skill.

I'm really careful with what the music gets put with, and we say no to so much stuff, loads of it, for things that might quadruple the sales of my album. But if it doesn't fit then it doesn't fit, you know?

When I am with my family, then I can just sort of switch off. It's kind of weird, because I go back and I go into this bedroom that I have had since I was a teenager. It is like this parallel universe, because one minute I am on the red carpet and then the next I am hiding out in this room I have had since I was 15.

I feel things in quite an intense way. I'm not actually the most intense person.

What I really like seeing from the stage is people having their own moments, when people are doing some performance of their own.

I quite like the drama of an encore. I think an encore is for those artists who are inclined to do dramatic gestures, and I certainly would say I am inclined towards them.

The release of 'Lungs' was so hard. It was terrifying, because it was the first time doing everything. The first experiences of media exposure were almost paralysing. I spent a lot of time crying on the floor of the studio - it sent me a bit mad.

I think I've always looked older than I am. I hope that's going to work in my favor when I get older.

When you're dressed up as David Bowie, with your eyebrows completely bleached, and you're doing this kind of strange dance with Paul McCartney while singing "Rebel Rebel" in the middle of the Met ball, and Madonna's looking at you . . . I was just thinking, It's become a bit weird.

I can't wait to get on stage, because there you don't worry about whether you'll ever get married because your life is insane, or whether you'll ever have another boyfriend again, you don't worry about the typical boundaries of how your life has to be.

I got to live out my 11-year-old fantasies - I got to go on stage with Green Day. Billie Joe called my name from the stage. 'Dookie' was the first album I ever bought. I covered the whole of 'Nimrod' and he'd heard it. That was like the 11-year-old girl dreamed.

I've always been attracted to romantic secondhand clothes. But my style developed as I started going to these strange raves where everybody had these very definitive costumes.

When something really hits me, it makes me want to either jump off something really high or lie down and be buried. I want people to get hit and caught by my music.

I'm quite glad I never learned to play the guitar, because I think I'd write songs that were more classically structured. As it is, I've had to create my own way of writing, which isn't typical. Everything's a big crescendo.

I think I just get excited by music, and, like, singing is a very physical thing. It releases endorphins in your body. You're using almost muscle in there, and I think that adrenaline really helps to kind of make the songs fresh every time.

I have this sensation of being in flight all the time, but being on stage is like creating a sanctuary in which you can completely lose yourself. The bits of your personality that you keep under wraps in ordinary life, you can let them run free.

I've been having this really weird anxiety dream about arriving too late or too early, and the people in charge are like, 'You have to leave! You have to go back to the hotel and get ready!' And I use the wrong exit, and I'm running down the red carpet in ­pyjamas, like, 'No! Don't look at me!'

Worst nightmares can also appear with your eyes open.

I spent my 16th birthday high as a kite, jumping out of a tree topless in my local park just because it felt amazing hitting the ground.

The only music I was listening to for ages was old soul. So I wasn't listening to a lot of new music - especially indie music.

I like the idea of taking off like a bird.

I like the idea of not being afraid of letting your imagination rule you, to feel the freedom of expression, to let creativity be your overwhelming drive rather than other things.

Sometimes I find that music is so much more attractive than love. I don’t know… It’s like some kind of euphoria, that love can’t bring to you.

My room is like an antique shop, full of junk, and weird stuff. There's a big sword in there. And a taxidermy bird, and a couple of birdcages. And a lot of newspaper cuttings. I used to have a weird thing about cutting out morbid headlines from newspapers, and collecting them. I was fascinated with drowning, which is kind of strange.

If you see a river running smoothly, it's because someone has drowned in it, and if it's raging, it means that it's still got bloodlust.

I was always that girl growing up who you could find dancing down supermarket aisles. It's that sense of not feeling inhibited. Dancing in supermarkets is my favorite thing.

I'd gone from being this art student messing about with music to this girl with a record deal, magazine front covers and all this hype. In many ways, it was everything I ever wanted, but when it happened all I felt was total, paralysing fear.

For someone so conflicted, who am I to give advice to anybody? It’s such a funny, grandiose idea

I get in fights with my sister all the time. She comes on the road with me and we fight - like sisters do.

I want people to get hit and caught by my music.

I'm a choir girl gone horribly, desperately wrong.

When I first started, especially because I got the Critics' Choice before I'd released an album, there was a lot of scrutiny on what my character was, what my background was, what colour my hair was. I fought quite hard for the music to overtake the personality aspect.