Quotes from Sharon Van Etten

I love traveling. I love meeting people. I love performing, but it's hard to be gone and to not have a real life and to just get the emotional love that you need from the people you're traveling with.

One day when I have a band I will have a band name, but since it's just me I feel it should just be my name. For me it doesn't make much sense since the music is from me and about me. I haven't ever been in a band.

Sometimes music should just be about you sitting on your bedroom floor, or in the back of the car, singing along stupidly. Evan Dando's music was all about that for me.

My mom is a history teacher, so we'd go on all these historic trips as kids around Halloween, because it was kind of creepy.

I was pretty troubled for a long time. And I didn't know that. As a kid, I never talked about my emotions. My mom gave me a journal, but I didn't know what it meant. I just wrote all the time, not even thinking about it. But it also made me feel better.

I have a lot of alter-egos: I would love to be a back-up singer for someone someday. I have an electronic side-project. I have a '90s grunge side project; I have a piano project... I have this industrial, goth-electronic song, super creepy sounding, just really dark and dreary.

I think there are times in a lot of people's pasts where they've unintentionally fallen in love with really damaged people. You go out with someone who's a mess so you can feel less of a mess.

I try to focus on the melodies and try to make everything else minimal. The melody and the lyrics are most important to me.

You'd better have something good to say if you've got a roomful of people who've paid to see you.

Every time I re-perform a song, I gain some perspective.

I'm getting bored performing the same songs over and over. Songwriting comes and goes.

I'm still friends with most of my exes. There are only one or two people that I'll never talk to again.

I hate putting negative energy out into the world. But it's either inside or out. I mean, it's either get an ulcer or have a fight.

There's something to writing a hook and something to writing a memorable melody. That's what I liked about musicals. Then I realized I could write my own songs, and I didn't have to sing other people's.

I only work with people that are mysteries.

Everyone has their down days. Unfortunately, that's when I am the most prolific.

I've always liked to learn how to do things - I'm a hobby person. So I'll learn something at a beginner's level, then usually move on to the next thing.

I go back to things all the time. It's really nice, too, like when I'm going through some kind of a writer's block, and I'm feeling uninspired, I go to some of my oldest songs from over the years and sift through them, and one thing that's very nice is to see how I've grown up a little bit. A little bit.

I totally lucked out by meeting a lot of amazing people. I guess it stems from going to shows and being confident enough to meet people and be able to talk to them like a normal person rather than have my head down all the time.

Most musicians are normal people who want to hang out and are really down to earth.

I can't read notes well, but I can hear something and sing a harmony to it automatically.

Everything will be okay. I have a sticker on my laptop that says that.

It's not onstage as often anymore, but whenever I got anxious, I used to talk a lot more, and I wouldn't even know what I was saying... it was so bad. If I just talk myself through something, even if it's just talking about nothing, it usually gets me out of it.

I work a lot with sounds based on stream of consciousness. I like the way it sounds, then I turn it into something that makes more sense.