Quotes from Lorde

Grace Jones was an influence, because I was like, 'These shoulders! These pants! Girls can wear pants and be awesome.' That's something I definitely embody.

Musicians like James Blake were a big influence on me. How he uses his vocals is amazing. And then Yeasayer and Animal Collective, who aren't pop bands exactly, but they do something that is so catchy and undeniable and so much fun.

When I was trying to come up with a stage name, I thought 'Lord' was super rad, but really masculine - ever since I was a little kid, I have been really into royals and aristocracy. So to make Lord more feminine, I just put an 'e' on the end! Some people think it's religious, but it's not.

In a perfect world, I would never do any interviews, and probably there would be one photo out there of me, and that would be it.

I'm speaking for a bunch of girls when I say that the idea that feminism is completely natural and shouldn't even be something that people find mildly surprising, it's just a part of being a girl in 2013.

I've always listened to a lot of rap. It's all, 'Look at this car that cost me so much money, look at this Champagne.' It's super fun.

Don't be afraid. Be the kind of person your mother warned you about.

David Bowie told me my music sounds like tomorrow

I come from a short fiction background, and my mom is a poet, so I've always read poetry; I've always had a lot of different influences both linguistically and musically.

I'm surrounded by the beach, so I love to fish and to dive and to swim. I walk a lot, and I bike around. I hang out at the beach, really, and muck around.

I come from a big, loud family, and I'm the quieter one. Performing is something I have to switch on. I've heard I get real sassy onstage, which I'm not in real life! It's fun to be that person for an hour a night.

With pop music and pop musicians, you know everything about everyone all the time, particularly their physical appearance. With female musicians, that's made a big thing of, and I think people, certainly with me, have appreciated a bit of mystery.

It must have been when I was 14 or 15 that I started tentatively writing songs and was able to convey an emotion and a lyric with what I wanted to say.

I try to stay away from talking about boys all the time. You can go to Taylor Swift to hear that.

Two things to remember in life: take care of your thoughts when you are alone, and take are of your words when you are with people.

I'm a pop princess at heart. Pop is about distilling what you want to say and making it easy. And the way I write isn't about making things easy. It's a weird juxtaposition.

I tend to start with a full set of lyrics, and then my producer, Joel Little, and I work on the music collaboratively.

I'd refer to myself as a feminist. I don't think my music is overtly rooted in feminism. I'm a teenager, and 95 percent of my friends are boys, and that's just the way I've always been.

I went to my prom. I wore this olive green, floor-length backless dress. It was rad.

The way I dress and carry myself, a lot of people find it intimidating. I think my whole career can be boiled down to the one word I always say in meetings: strength.

We all have Tumblr, and we all have Instagram and everything. People care so much about it because, now, any random can be famous on the Internet if their world looks good on Tumblr. And so everyone at high school strives for this kind of aesthetic correctness.

I curate my life in a way. It's always playing on my mind, kind of a love-hate relationship. I'm not one of those people who's, like, 'I wish Facebook wasn't around,' because, you know, it is what it is.

I am really into how words sound out loud, so I was always the kid who would, like, read the page of the book to herself in her room over and over and over. And Raymond Carver is great for that. Tobias Wolff is an author who is really good for that as well.

Everyone's competing for a love they won't receive.