Quotes from Beth Orton

From the beginning, I wanted to make dance music with a human element to it.

Therapy is like telling your nightmares when you're a kid; they lose their power to hurt and control.

You can have all sorts of relationships, but there's something with musicians working together where you can have relationship that can just continue to grow in a beautiful way.

The way I write, words can means lots of different things.

I want it to be more universal than that - like a painter doesn't have to explain his life story away to justify his painting.

When I'm on a roll nothing makes me happier or feel more satisfied, like plugging in, life makes sense.

We're all like little ants who scurry around with the materials that are at hand right now. Each generation finds new materials. Its just evolution, isn't it?

I love the water more than anything. I'm not very good at sunbathing - I get really bored. I love swimming and I love being like a fish and getting in the sea and just - I don't know, it feels right.

Before you worry about what genre it is, about whether it's a loop or a drum, it's about what suits the song. It's using what's within your reach, but also reaching for everything you can. I don't know if I always get it right, because I don't know every sound yet.

I don't believe in trouble. Because I think that trouble is sometimes good, sometimes bad. I've been known to be called trouble, which I think is quite a compliment. But I suppose, thinking about it, that my best and worst trouble has always had something to do with a man.

My manager said the next best inspiration to heartbreak is travel, and it's true.

I learned to embrace my individuality, and if that meant writing a song on one chord over and over again, then that's what I do.

Norfolk is not on the way to anywhere, you don't stop off on the way somewhere else - it's an end in itself. You have to want to go there; it's an effort.

Heaven is what we spend our lives trying to find.

The upside to smoking is that you get to be social. I was looking for a light when I bumped into Ben Harper's manager. A couple of days later, Ben and I were in the studio.

I'm coming into places with some people who just want to hear what I did before, with some people who want to hear me with a band, but I am just at the moment sticking to my guns and saying, 'You know what? I want you just to hear this for a minute. I want it to be in the context of me and a guitar.'

Sugaring season is the season when you tap the trees for sugar that turns into maple syrup. I've married someone from Vermont, so it's an expression I kept hearing, and I'm like, 'What is that? That's just so beautiful.' I like the idea it's the very, very first murmurings of spring.

My dad got me a chemistry book one Christmas and I burnt the garden shed down. I remember there was the most beautiful smell forever after in the remains.

I used to think it was good to kind of work within your limitations.