Quotes from PJ Harvey

It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent.

You shouldn't separate the piece from the way it's intended. I always feel like words shouldn't be unraveled from the music. They're all linked so much together.

What we are fed through the media I do not accept, unless you see it with your own eyes you cant trust anything.

Fly with me, touch the face of the true God. And then cry with joy at the depth of my love.

The artists that I love- whether painters or filmmakers- it's because something resonates in me because I've felt it.

I feel like it's very important that I'm doing what I'm doing, and I want to keep honoring that and try and do it as honestly as I can.

In college, I thought I wanted to be solely an artist, and then when I got here, to college, I was like, "Okay, well I want to be a songwriter," 'cause it was like close to Nashville.

Never settle for anything less than you want.

People want to build musicians into mythical beings.

Like I have to pretend like I'm a male rapper, that I got stacks and we're in the club, and what do I want to say. And then, when writing Rare I could just be PJ.

Before I record for real, I know pretty much exactly how I want them to feel.

I find it hard myself to feel justified to sing in a very politically direct way about war or social conditions because I feel so ignorant of a lot of it.

Making me into a role model is placing too much importance on what I see as a work in progress.

I think that's always very valuable: to keep the mind open to receiving all sorts of information, which can then be used in my work, but also just as a human being.

I studied art just short of the level where you can earn a degree.

As I grew older, I actually was prepared to go into fine arts school and do a degree. That was what I was actually settled upon when I was offered a record deal.

If I ever meet a writer or a painter, I don't presuppose that they are like the work they are presenting.

Well, I don't really concern myself too much with what other people make of my work.

I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. I have to work really hard at it to try and say the things I'm concerned with.

There's a level of discipline I use as a writer, designed to get better at what I'm doing, that requires quite a lot of study and quite a lot of hard work as well.

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs.

I'm doing quite a lot of painting on stones - little funny fish and animals.