Robyn Quotes

Activists are cultural artists. They envision a world that does not yet exist, and then take action to create that world.'

I'm maybe not so anxious to be a successful pop artist. Of course I want people to like my music, but I know what the price of success can be, too. Basically, I'm happy as long as I can keep my freedom, so I'm so happy with the way things are at the moment. I get to be hands-on with details in every aspect of what I'm doing, but I also get to perform for a big audience.

Sometimes I think that everyone has a tragedy waiting for them, that the people buying milk in their pajamas or picking their noses at stoplights could be only moments away from disaster. That everyone's life, no matter how unremarkable, has a moment when it will become extraordinary - a single encounter after which everything that really matters will happen.

I try to be genuine. I try to be real. It's such a subjective thing, but I try to convey an emotion.

Having access to mobile phones and being able to document your own life brings people together.

Oscar Wilde once said that to live is the rarest thing in the world, because most people just exist, and that's all. I don't know if he's right, but I do know that I spend a long time existing, and now, I intend to live.

Maybe I bring people into that pop world who don't usually find themselves there because there's not enough stuff for them to get excited about otherwise.

You cant censor peoples dreams.

I always felt like I could combine good pop songs that are easy for people to like with a real person and a real mind and integrity. So maybe I bring people into that pop world who don't usually find themselves there because there's not enough stuff for them to get excited about otherwise. I try to be genuine. I try to be real. It's such a subjective thing, but I try to convey an emotion.

The marketing is just as important as the music, almost.

Having access to mobile phones and being able to document your own life brings people together. Technology has a lot to do with how the world is developing at the moment because there are very raw and pure and primal emotions that people are communicating to each other over the Internet. It's like our new feathers, our new face paint. We're still trying to find love and friendship and cool music, but now it's over the Internet.

So don't stop moving forward. For a while, you may feel as though you're taking two steps forward, one step back. And there may be some personal heartache along the way. But when you look your little ones in the eye, you will find your voice and take a stand for them. We are their voices. And we must have the courage to stand up for them, whatever the odds or however powerful the opposition might be.

Commercial music is music that a lot of people connect to at the same time, but that doesn't mean it has to be something shallow or without personality.

I always felt like I could combine good pop songs that are easy for people to like with a real person and a real mind and integrity.

The music industry is such a huge machine. There are still a lot of good people in it, but the character of the industry and the culture of the industry is very fast.

And I realized that there's a big difference between deciding to leave and knowing where to go.

The way I figured it, keeping quiet was safe. Words could betray you if you chose the wrong ones, or mean less if you used too many. Jokes could be grandly miscalculated, or stories deemed boring, and I'd learned early on that my sense of humor and ideas about what sorts of things were fascinating didn't exactly overlap with my friends.

If everything really does get better, the way everyone claims, then happiness should be graphable. But that's crap, because better isn't quantifiable.

Technology has a lot to do with how the world is developing at the moment because there are very raw and pure and primal emotions that people are communicating to each other over the Internet.

Sometimes I write songs that just come out in a pop format because I grew up on melody and these amazing artists during the 80s. It's my tradition and it's something that I can't really control.

People say, "I can't take you seriously because you're so young." But I think when you're young, what you feel is more pure.

All the big pop acts that I've been into over the years - whether it's ABBA or Prince - managed to combine amazing melodies and honest human emotion. But coming out of the super-super-commerical pop industry in the 90s, maybe people forgot about the fact that pop music can do both of those things.

My parents had an independent theater company here in Sweden during the 1980s, so I was raised watching my parents create independently, having a lot of fun and just doing what they wanted to do. I think that idea of independence as an artist was something I was always used to. And then I entered the industry from a very commercial perspective, and things were very different then from what I grew up with.

It was like the part of me that had enjoyed those friends had evaporated, leaving behind a huge, echoing emptiness, and I was scrabbling on the edge of it, trying not to fall into the hole within myself because I was terrified to find out how far down it went.

You apply the skills you use to produce your own book to make an anthology. Shaping. Rhythm.

You have to invest something [in your work]. If you don't risk something that really matters to you - like your integrity, or your pride, or your time, or your security, or your reputation - if you don't risk yourself, you can hear it right away.

Prince is king to me. As this half-naked, short black guy who looked like a girl in the 70s and 80s, he was talking about women in a way that was very unusual because he didn't objectify them.

Even if I'm sad, dancing is a way to let stuff out.

The way I figured it, keeping quiet was safe. Words could betray you if you choose the wrong ones, or mean less if you used too many.

History is filled with fictional people.

[In making music] it's nice to not have a goal, to not have a set format. It's very liberating to just get out of your comfort zone and be in a new space.

When I'm in the studio, I become a total nerd.

People have so many expectations when they go out on stage, so many wishes about what their night is going to be: if they're going to meet that person, have a fun time with their friends, have a good high, hear good music. People get drunk and turn into themselves in a way, and they go to experience some kind of emotion. But it's not always about fun. There's a destructive side to it. But I'm more into the empowerment of going out, because it's always been the place where I could be myself and get inspired. Even if I'm sad, dancing is a way to let stuff out.

The funny thing about gold is how quickly it can tarnish.

It was about being able to dance like Cassidy did, as though no one was watching, as though the moment was infinite enough without needing to document its existence.

I wondered what things what things became when you no longer needed them, and I wondered what the future would hold once we'd gotten past our personal tragedies and proven them ultimately survivable.

When I started making music, I made music in a very commercial space and I didn't have room to really explore things on my own terms. It took me awhile to create a little bubble where I could explore other things, and new things. When I did that, my tools were songwriting and arranging.

I don't think of myself as just a pop artist, but someone who knows she has a bigger meaning. I'm not doing this for myself; I'm doing this because it's my destiny.