Quotes from Lorde

My name is Ella; that's who I am at school, hanging out with friends, while I'm doing homework. But when I'm up on stage, 'Lorde' is a character.

I've always hung out with people older than me, with my parents' friends, because I appreciated the conversation.

I love thrift shopping. You can get ten things because everything costs, like, three dollars.

We're bigger than we ever dreamed, and I'm in love with being queen.

I'm, like, the most terrible person to go to a party with in the world, because I just can't enjoy it. I'm just thinking all the time about what it means and what the implications are.

I'm really interested in kind of weird social situations and cliques, watching girls vying for attention, watching how the popularity thing happens. I've always thought too hard about everything.

People respond to something which intrigues them instead of something that gives them all the information - particularly in pop, which is, like, the genre for knowing way too much about everyone and everything.

I've always been fascinated with aristocracy. I'm really interested in the Ivy Leagues, the final clubs, all the really old-money families, the concept of old money.

Taylor Swift is so flawless, and so unattainable, and I don't think it's breeding anything good in young girls.

I've been in some situations where people have treated me like a fascinating toy. You know, it's just like an interesting kind of fun thing to have a play with. It's very weird for me. I feel like a tiny baby.

My advice to young people wanting to make music and to be in this industry is to really spend your time making music. Make so much music you have no friends. Make music. Figure out what it is you love, and... because if you're making cool art, then everything else will fall into line.

I think young people are the most creative and the coolest - people that we should be learning from. Even when I'm at a party, I'm analyzing it and thinking about it in the context of how I would write about it. That side of me never switches off.

Coming from New Zealand, all the music I listen to is not made by New Zealanders. People never come to New Zealand to play a show because it's in the middle of nowhere.

If I'm going to dress up, I like things that are quite long and classic. I like feeling dressed up and like a lady.

I'm a Kiwi. I'm from a beach suburb called Takapuna, which is on the north shore of Auckland in New Zealand.

I think it would be impossible not to be an Internet kid, coming from New Zealand, because culturally it's a little barren.

We might be hollow, but we're brave

I actually love Twitter and Instagram. I do think it's so strange to think that 20 years ago, people would never have known personal stuff about musicians and actors, but I like it. As long as I don't obsessively overshare, it's OK. And when I do overshare, it's just, like, me saying, 'I've got $7 in my bank account!'

I'm very conscious of people having pretty short attention spans: I know, I'm guilty of it. I'm 17 now: what happens by the time I'm 21, am I a burn-out or something? Will they still listen to my record?

Nobody asks me about what male musicians I think about; I only ever get asked about females.

I find a lot of feminist reading quite confusing and that often there's a set of rules, and people will be like, 'Oh, this person isn't a true feminist because they don't embody this one thing,' and I don't know, often it can be a gray area, and it can be a hard thing to navigate.

I don't think people look at how pop stars live and feel anything aspirational at all.

Obviously I've had this fascination with aristocracy my whole life. Like, the kings and queens of 500 years ago... they're like rock stars. If there was a 'TMZ' 500 years ago, it would be about, like, Henry VIII and Marie Antoinette and all those people.

My dad is a civil engineer, and my mom is a stay-at-home mom. The fact that my parents weren't really involved in music was kind of good, because it meant that I had something that was private and personal.