Most of the time I don't even talk about any direct lineage of songs, because I feel like it just chains them down into my own consciousness, and the whole fun of them is being able to live in others' consciousness.
Regina SpektorI think that when somebody tells you something of value, a lot of the time there's this thing that happens, and I don't know if you find it, where they go exactly for the word or the moment or the thing that you were hoping they wouldn't notice, or inside didn't feel 100 percent secure about. If they point it out, then that really sends you the message of, "Okay, I was trying to override my own instincts about it, and I guess I shouldn't."
Regina Spektor[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.
Regina SpektorI don't kiss losers and I don't kiss winners, and I don't fight for honor 'cause we all are born sinners
Regina SpektorI think that you have to let yourself be agitated and annoyed and not be fully comfortable.
Regina SpektorMaybe one day you’ll understand I don’t want nothing more than to sweetly hold your hand.
Regina SpektorI'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?
Regina SpektorI remember somebody handed me Siddhartha when I was I think 18, and I started to read it and I just really didn't like it, and I left it and it was just gathering dust for years. Then maybe five years later, the world shook as I read it.
Regina SpektorI 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.
Regina SpektorI was a kid, and I was very excited to experience this whole new world. And everything was fun, everything from, oh, wow, we get bananas - I'd only seen them in picture books, you know - to, like, the diversity of the neighborhood and to explore Judaism for the first time. It was really hushed in the Soviet Union.
Regina SpektorYou decide if you're ready for something. It can come in the guise of, "Oh, I don't think I like this."
Regina SpektorI hate picking favourite books. I usually tend to stay away from all the 'top record' and 'favourite song' and 'favourite book', and I just think it doesn't do any good for anybody.
Regina SpektorI feel different. You know this many times over, because you are a parent, but it transforms you. It's this incredible experience where, in one way, you are still very much yourself, and in some ways you become even more connected to the rest of yourself. All of a sudden, you just get more connected to your child self, and your teenage self, and all these selves that you've maybe been abandoning at every date post that you pass.
Regina SpektorI saw certain things that I think maybe other kids are protected from. Like, I saw my parents struggling. I knew that we were cutting out coupons and buying dented cans because they were cheaper. And all our furniture was from the garbage. It was just - and to me because I was a kid, all that stuff was really exciting.
Regina SpektorI 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.
Regina SpektorI think it's ridiculous that we even have to talk about gay rights as rights...It's gonna be as shocking as the treatment of slaves someday.
Regina SpektorSometimes I make stuff, and even I don't like it. There's something about it that I don't really like, or annoys me. For whatever reason it needs to come out.
Regina SpektorI'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.
Regina SpektorYou are always growing, so maybe the way that you bring the songs forward and translate them is more mature.
Regina SpektorWe don't have a lot of power in the world, right? We can only control so many things. It allows you to curate your own emotional and artistic intake of life.
Regina SpektorIt's always interesting to me to see people projecting things, like people would say, "This record is much more mature than your other record" and I would think, "Well, this record has more songs from when I was 18 on it than the other one."
Regina SpektorI have my own tastes and I have my my own... like, I dunno. I think it's really subjective; something that I think is a great song, is unlistenable to somebody else, which I've come to realise.
Regina SpektorI go through insanity before a show. It's not really a process but it's like absolute mortal fear.
Regina SpektorI 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.
Regina SpektorI 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.
Regina SpektorI don't think about, "How does this song that has more of an electronic mix prefix to a song that has a full orchestra next to a song that has other things?" I just work on it as-needed.
Regina SpektorI'm both kinds of a person; I have a side of me that's very light and very optimistic and finds everything surreal and hilarious, and then I have a side of me that's - I don't know what the right word is - tormented or just feels very overwhelmed.
Regina SpektorThe other day I was down by the Hudson River, and I see two nuns in full habit rollerblading down the street holding hands. And I'm like, 'Oh, my God, I get it. The world is surreal and beautiful. And everything is fine.'
Regina SpektorYou ask a person what their personal favorite song on the album is, and it's literally the one with the least amount of listens if you looked at the statistics of it.
Regina Spektor