Quotes from Laura Marling

When I'm singing I feel like I'm talking to someone. I'm in conversation when I perform - either with myself or with whomever is listening.

I just think of everything I do and how happy it will make me to do it. I don't like having my photograph taken, for instance, so I don't do that often.

I get up, go and get a coffee, and go do the crossword - I'm loyal to one particular paper, the 'Guardian' - and that's my idea of a perfect morning.

The romanticised life, where all the great poetry and music and art of the world comes from, is great but it requires a lot of self-indulgence.

I'd prefer to be good, but I'm not always. I struggle.

I do so hate to be forced to be anything than other than what I am.

I think I'll feel out of place wherever I go on earth, forever. But that's fine. I have to make my peace with that.

I tend to be drawn to people who are similar. Very independent. And the ones who aren't, it doesn't work. It doesn't last. I'm drawn to quiet people – certainly I am now.

People want to spend time together and I just couldn't pretend that I wanted to do that. But now I do get it. [..] Though I still don't do that.

Now that I'm feeling the responsibilities of adulthood, the choices we make become an incredible weight.

I'm a bit of a magpie: whatever I see or hear or read feeds into the songs.

All my songs come from me because I only seem able to write about myself and my experiences.

Oh! To not need cognitive justification for every single thing. Wouldn't that be a life?

You are what you can prove you've done. That's how people judge you.

I'd like to make music for as long as I can; it feels like something I need to do.

Womanhood is something you don't consider until it hits you.

I think your most intimate thoughts are only honest when they're in your head.

I made an important decision, which was to pursue happiness. Rather than accept unhappiness. That's why I'm here, and it's great. I'm in a very good place in my life.

I can't give up that quick My life is a candle and a wick You can put it out, but you can't break it down In the end we are waiting to be lit

There's a house across the river, but alas, I cannot swim I'll live my life regretting that I never jumped in

My reaction to everything in life is when it gets a bit complicated to water it down and make it simple again.

My songs are not pretty. They're what I call optimistic realism.

I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night.

It took a lot of time and practice for me to realise that there's no point trying to be something you're not.