Joanna Newsom's Quotes

I recorded harp first or singing first. I recorded it all together. Part of the reason is that I don't know how to play the songs without also singing. I forget how they progress. I don't think that any of them are verse, chorus, verse, and so on. They are not simple.

I wanted to write songs which I think is a different thing. I wanted to write music that is informed by folk music. The chord progressions are obvious references.

In high school, we studied a lot of poetical forms. I was really interested in the math that was involved and the strange live break ups. That gave me a great amount of respect for a rhymed stanza.

It's totally different. I usually don't tell people about the Pleased if they know me from the harp. And if they are there to see the Pleased, I usually don't tell them about the harp. I am nervous that these people will expect something similar.

You know some people say that you make watches or perfume bottles, it's all different things.

You know that's history, that's why some people say that my stuff is retro, but I don't agree.

If somebody asked me about my inspiration I would say that it's not the peopleand it's not the things, it's travel and experiencing different environments.

So if I want to buy a light in a shop and I don't find a light that I like, I think to myself what would I like? What would I like to buy? Then I started to imagine and design it for myself a lot of the time.

Then I started to do furniture and interiors for a friend and just to get stuff in a magazine, and then slowly started to build up and started to doing exhibitions.

Well, I never studied design and I went to art school to study art, you know, sculpture and things like that, and ended up making things like sculpture and started making chairs and jewelry together and that's how I started.

If you can just be yourself, then you have to be original because there's no one like you.

To create well I have to be in a good mood, happy and cool.

But to me, to be original is to be yourself.

Yeah, my dream would be to work for 6 months and then have 6 months to play, just snowboarding, surfing, and going to cool places to listen and be alone and kinda chill out.

And where I grew up in Australia, surfing was a part of culture.

I'm interested in youth culture and popular culture.

Design schools are good, I guess, sometimes I visit schools, but they are very very limiting.

I don't have any furniture of mine in my room.

I don't like to make my life like a book.

I have a lot of objects in my space, little things, reminders, memories.

I made some salt and pepper shakers a while back and waited three years for them to come.

I never buy magazines, I never even buy books.

I think it's really important to design things with a kind of personality.

I was much more interested in making things than in designing them.

I was sort of open to do anything, I was free.

I'd love to be approached to do ordinary things more.

I've always listened to a lot of film music, actually.

If I can feel freedom then I can create.

If you see something that you feel is familiar it gives you an important kind of emotional connection.

In Japan, Australia, and England there is such a strong youth culture.

My life style in a sense is kind of private.

Now I'm doing more snowboarding but I have to get back into surfing again.

People kind of tend to mystify design and architecture by suggesting you need to train.

So if I design it and then go away, it's still living somewhere and it still exists by itself without me.

You know like it has its own personality, its own character.