Quotes from Courtney Barnett

I liked the idea of being a photographer, just that you take this one picture of this one thing that'll never happen again - it's a bit weird when you think about it.

I really want a Christmas in New York one year, when it's snowing. Like, it's Christmas morning, and you have a fight with someone, and you run down the street, and it's snowing, and you can't find them.

I grew up listening to hipster jazz and classical records... we went and watched ballet and orchestras - lots of cool stuff. Which I'm really grateful for - it's pretty nice being introduced to that when you're little.

Leaving the house is a big enough occasion for me, so getting on a plane and flying across the world and playing to a room full of people is just out of this world.

I'm very hands on with my music - I do all the artwork and everything myself - and the songs I write aren't necessarily the most commercial.

I never planned to be a professional artist - I just want to be a sustainable artist. I guess they're the same thing if you look at them from a different angle.

If I make a wrong decision, I worry what might have been. I stress out over very insignificant things.

I just get bored really quickly and want to push myself to the next level.

I hate going anywhere. I'm really excited to travel and play all these different places, but if I had it my way, I would stay inside, maybe go to the back garden or walk around the corner to the shops. That's it.

I grew up listening to Nirvana and then went through some bad '90s pop stuff - a lot of Australian one-hit wonders.

Dad sometimes sends me texts saying, 'Just heard you on the radio, thumbs up', or whatever. So that's pretty cute.

When I was a teen, or like 18 to early 20s, I used to go to festivals all the time. I'd save all my money.

I reckon that growing up, listening to so much different music, I think over time I just kind of sucked it all in and it probably comes back out through my music.

Every time I write a song it feels like it could be the last one I do, or it always feels like a fluke.

People are like, 'Wow you started your own record label,' and treat me like I'm some sort of innovative genius, when I'm not at all. You've got the Internet and music - you put them together, and people hear your music.

What's funny about the slacker thing, people project an image of what they think a musician is: young, slack, unemployed - like a really romantic idea of a poet, writer or musician - which isn't really true a lot of the time. I don't reckon you would know anything about me if I wasn't moderately hard-working.

Everyone writes in whatever way feels comfortable to them. People write songs because maybe they don't feel so comfortable talking about whatever matters.

Obviously, the more you tour, the more comfortable you get.

The first song I wrote was called "You" and it was a love song about somebody who didn't even exist. I remember them all because I used to always write terrible poetry. I keep all my notebooks.

I played in school jazz bands and tried to start rock bands, but nobody was interested.

You can't read when you're traveling with other people; it always feels a bit rude.

I like reading biographies because most of them are slightly similar, and it's voyeuristic, looking into someone's life.

The music, I think, is just as important as the lyrics; it portrays the emotion of the song. I play the kind of music that I want to listen to.

People should be free to take whatever they want from music and I think that over time I realized that different people always find different things in my songs, which is really good.