Quotes from Jenny Lewis

It's weird because I am accessible to people on Twitter, and I can choose to read good things or mean things, and people can reach out to me directly and tell me how much they hate me or love the song. It's a very strange new paradigm as an artist to find yourself among this kind of connectivity.

When I sit down to write a song, there is no filter. I'm not trying to write for anyone or anything specifically. It's just trying to capture a little piece of your soul - even if it's a really ugly part.

I think it's always an adjustment for me, but I do feel like, ultimately, I can kind of write anywhere. It just takes a second to get back in to the groove.

My hair looks so good out in the desert, it's unbelievable. It's, like, perfectly not frizzy.

It's funny how a song can start in your mind, and then when it goes through all the filters, it ends up in a totally different spot.

I didn't know anything about music when I started a band. I barely knew how to play a guitar. I didn't know how to produce records. I learned how to play bass guitar and keyboards in Rilo Kiley. I picked up a lot from my collaborators.

Losing your parent is unlike anything.

I don't feel unlucky in love anymore, and it's not all emo. It's a scary place to be in when you're like: 'What am I supposed to write about now? I don't feel heartbroken, so now what?'

I'm more in the Stones camp than the Beatles camp.

I felt like onstage I have to have a certain amount of anonymity, like, personal anonymity, to feel loose and free. When you're up there with people who've known you for a decade, and you make a bad joke and you hear the cackling behind the drums, it's hard to get lost in the moment.

Sometimes people come to my shows and think I'm a Christian artist, and they put their hands up in the air, like they do. But first of all, I'm a Jewish girl from the Valley, and I'm from Los Angeles. It's funny to be misinterpreted.

I tend to work well within a deadline. If I know I have to get something in three weeks, I tend to A, enjoy myself a little bit more, and B, really work well.

Being in a band is a really magical thing because you've got a family and you operate as this one entity. It's very democratic; everyone is involved in the output. But within that, there can be a lot of disagreements and strife.

Songs are really interesting in that way. Sometimes, they grow with you. Sometimes, you outgrow them.

I felt like hip-hop was my music, it was like my outsider music... but then my mom started answering our phone, 'Yo, what's up.' She was hearing me talk to my friends. I was like, 'No, mom, don't cop the hip-hop talk.'

Sometimes things feel hopeless. Not always within my own life - but looking outward, it seems like rough times lie ahead of us. The world seems to be kind of caving in on itself in a lot of ways. But I try to look on the bright side.

When I first started touring, we had a crappy van, and we would all share rooms. So for many years as a grown adult woman, I would share a bed with a bandmate, whether it would be Jimmy Tamborello from the Postal Service or Pierre De Reeder from Rilo Kiley, just a pillow barrier between us sleeping on the same bed.

I come from a duo, actually, quite literally. My parents are Linda and Eddie, and they had an act in Vegas called 'Love's Way.'

My parents divorced when I was 3 years old. They had a lounge act in Las Vegas, where I was born. The band broke up and the marriage dissolved, and my mother, my sister and I moved to Southern California. And I didn't see my dad a lot growing up; he was on the road a lot. I'd see him every couple years.

I think you kind of lose the human aspect when you make things too perfect.

My mother had a great vinyl collection, and she was constantly playing female singer-songwriters. I first learned about classic song structures by listening to them, and Laura Nyro particularly stood out. Her voice was outside what you'd usually hear on the radio; that really appealed to me.

I find most modern country virtually unlistenable. I can't relate to the music or the lyrics.

I'm a late bloomer. It's taken me a long time to find my voice, and I think all the records I've made over the years, I was finding my voice, and that's part of the process.

I grew up on Loretta Lynn and Dusty Springfield. I remember lying about it; it wasn't cool to listen to country when I was 12.