PJ Harvey Quotes

First off, I think nudity is taken differently in America, though they did make a fuss in England, too.

It's so interesting to me how songs take on a shape and body of their own and grow.

What Rare [albom] allows me to do is gonna show people other things that I'm capable of 'cause they really haven't heard a lot of things outside of the rap stuff that I do.

I would listen most particularly to the countries whose language I didn't understand, didn't know what they were singing. But being a singer myself, I could understand because of the emotion.

I'm finding that writing poetry is strengthening my songwriting, because you're learning to make a piece of writing work on a page with nothing else. I was also finding within poetry I felt a lot more free to write about very different matters, to write about social issues or things that are going on around me.

Ever since time began: What song is not about love? Whether it's about love from man to woman or parent to child, or grandmother to granddaughter... It just goes on and on. Or whether it's the love of one's country.

I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. I have to work really hard at it to try and say the things I'm concerned with.

You can sing a very aggressive word in such a way that it's very funny. You can change words, completely turn them around on their head so that they mean exactly the opposite of what they are written down. There are endless possibilities which I think Diamanda Galás is doing already. She turns everything upside down by the way she sings it. She makes you feel nauseous or horrified or ridiculous just by her voice. I think that's an incredible power.

In the same way, I write some of my more difficult pieces when I'm at very happy stages in my life.

As far as in my adult life, it kinda started (with) writing first 'cause I went to school in Nashville. I mean, not Nashville but close to Nashville, and I met my managers in L.A. at a convention randomly. And then, it kinda just started from there. And then, I got my publishing deal.

Well, I don't really concern myself too much with what other people make of my work.

I find it hard myself to feel justified to sing in a very politically direct way about war or social conditions because I feel so ignorant of a lot of it.

I feel like the actual, the most beautiful thing about a song is that it is something that goes out there in the universe and people use it in the way that they need it in their lives.

What we are fed through the media I do not accept, unless you see it with your own eyes you cant trust anything.

I get to a point when I've collected together enough words that seem like they want to be songs rather than poems, or sometimes not.

I've been so used to being supported by musicians, and I don't class myself as a particularly adept musician on instruments. I think I'm a songwriter.

There's so much you can do with laying words on a bed of music. You can completely change their meaning with the type of music or the way they're sung.

We just kind of lost our way. But we were looking to be free. One day we'll float. Take life as it comes.

I just love having no clothes on outside, and the only time to do that is when the sun's shining. It's a wonderful sensation to not have any clothes on.

I think it does surprise me a bit when people have a very fixed idea of what I'm like, based upon the work that I do, which is something that is very separate.

[Writing] has helped me meet people.

I think a lot of people have an idealistic view - if you grow up in the country, there can't possibly be anything wrong with you.

I don't hold onto anything, because it's a waste of energy to do so, really. There's nothing that I can do about the way people want to write about me. I just try and concentrate on my work and do that as well as I can.

My town was even smaller. Only six hundred people. We didn't have a grocery store.

You go back and look at some of the ancient writings that exist throughout the world about wars and it's the same; the human beings' articulation of events is the same. That really fascinated me.

I'm always trying to swim to new ground.

I didn't even know the industry of songwriting existed. I thought everybody sang songs and they were only singing the songs that they wrote. So after I found out about songwriting in college, I was like, "Okay, I want to do that."

I grab an instrument to make my body a song, but I'm not a player as such, maybe a little more on guitar, but certainly not piano.

I like to be around things that I find inspiring.

Love for money is my sin, any man calls, I'll let him in.

I'm a visual artist myself and always have been so it's very natural for me to be very concerned with presentation, whether it's artwork or onstage.

When I write - I always write on my own - I demo those songs on a four-track.

Ive always been very visceral in that I feel things very deeply.

Everything from a lifetime's worth of collecting things. You know as we go through life, and something stays and ends up on your shelf and lives there until you die? Just those little things.

It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent.

I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do, then I'm myself, and if I don't, then I give nothing.

With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song.

I'm a very private person, so obviously I don't enjoy talking about more personal matters. But at the same time I care very much about my work and I would like people to know that it exists. So I appreciate that there's a meeting point, where I would like people to know about the work that I'm doing, and that requires me to talk about it.

The way I make music is unique to myself and the way I have lived my life - no one else would tell that story in the same way that I do.

Making me into a role model is placing too much importance on what I see as a work in progress.

As I grew older, I actually was prepared to go into fine arts school and do a degree. That was what I was actually settled upon when I was offered a record deal.

I think that most art is asking a question or is looking for something, looking for answers and that is what life seems to be about for most people.

I was like just writing and writing and then I kinda developed my sound. And then, my managers were like, "Okay, we're gonna try to get a deal." And then first it was Interscope, and then it was Atlantic. And then, I ended up signing with Atlantic, but it was like a long process, a really long... it was A LONG PROCESS. I feel like it took me two years to do it.

I come from an art-school background, and I still feel that in my music, it's about exploration and challenging myself, about putting myself in a place that's frightening because I haven't been there before.

I do write a lot of prose. It's not disciplined enough yet that it's actually become stories, or short stories. The idea of writing a novel seems impossible.

People have this idea of me being some kind of monster, and that's the complete opposite of who I am.

And all of these writers offer me a greater understanding of what it is to be alive, and that is such an incredible thing art can do for other people. It made me want to try and get close to this strange, mysterious thing that people can do with words.

I would never feel confident enough to express my views and opinions as the right ones because I just don't think that's possible. There are so many sides to everything that nobody is right or wrong.