Jenny Hval quotes:

I'm inspired by that rawness in very direct communication. My work is not meant to keep people happy or give them an escape.

I really hated being the Norwegian girl in every single conversation in Australia, so I tried to make my Norwegian-ness invisible, speaking like whoever was around me.

I took interest in Paris Hilton at one point and got fascinated with her voice.

Norway is pretty forward thinking in terms of gender equality, but we don't seem to practice it as well as we think. I'm constantly thinking: How much power have we really gained? We have to keep fighting to even keep what we've fought for already.

Norway's a very gender-aware country, and we're very liberal. There are lots of women's voices being heard here compared to many other countries.

I'm not trying to be a solution or create a freer, utopian world. I think my music dreams of it, though.

I've always seen myself as the person listening to alternative music and all that - generic indie person. I always tried to be the least pretty I could be.

When I was growing up, I would try to sing out of key very consciously. I was probably afraid of trying too hard to do something beautiful, and then I just wasn't good enough. But I've learned that I was also on the outside - wanting more challenge by living in that more conventional world.

Everybody needs to read a lot of revolutionary stuff, because the revolution is a big part of our will to live.

I disagree very strongly with people saying "that battle is over." If you've started a battle, I don't think it ever ends. The illusion that it's ended can reverse any good results that have come from it.

I've always been a fan of reading art catalogues from exhibitions, and plays, and I've worked with a surrealist German playwright, Heiner Müller.

I remember being very, very aware of gender when I was really young. Not necessarily in a bad way. Maybe it's a little bit because I'm Norwegian and how I've been brought up.

I'm always going back and forth between wanting to do stuff that's abstract and stuff that's just telling everybody to listen.

Gym is a center of capitalist breakdown, and everything is focused on the individual.

The body should not just be something you see. It's also the inside of it. It's frightening and abstract and much more than pretty or not pretty. The shape of it is boring.

I'm obsessed with voices in film. I have this memory of how people say words, even on the most intensely stupid reality TV show.

Health is so important now, it's ridiculous - the body has become frightening, this thing that will kill you if you don't keep really healthy. The body is the enemy now.

I'm constantly reading and trying to enlighten myself to how the world works in its silent ways to make everything seem normal when it's actually incredibly discriminating.

When I write stuff that's provocative, I want people to think about that, too. I'm in between a pop musician and an artist in that way. I want people to be part of the music as they listen, but I also want them to think: What was that?

I'm not in any way trying to make statements that are not also invaded by emotions and abstract ideas that I don't really understand myself. It's more interesting when I can do that.

It feels very different to have long, thick, brightly colored hair. It makes me feel so conflicted to wear, and I believe showing a conflicted person onstage is actually really interesting and emotionally engaging. I'm trying to not just be the person standing on the outside and looking at something, but to actually be it, in a way.

I couldn't even have a guitar. But I got a three-track recorder that was so small that I could take it with me. Then I started recording and writing properly. I recorded lots of voices, not just my own. I was interested in people speaking and singing English and trying out words.

I got really interested in the language used in blogs written by young girls - a young person's aggression, which is always lacking from the visual world.

I went through various phases of different accents - I get ridiculously obsessed with different accents, different regional ways of using the voice, different types of singing. It's all tied together. Speaking is a kind of singing, as are crying and laughing.

I'm very interested in the visual world because I'm also very interested in feminism. I find that the world of watching takes us into the most psychotic state of, like, "You are this one person, but you have to become another person to see these images."

I've studied film a lot, so I know much more about film than music, but I don't think I could have made films.

There's a great relationship between pop music and the way the body could be seen from the inside - when I was singing or listening to music I would change shape in my head, becoming all kinds of things and people. Music is a way of making your body.

Soft things are terrifying. They're the real signals of death. Images of strength can never be that terrifying. It's the images of weakness that are a real apocalypse.

Very devoted religious people are so extroverted, but at the same time, they're so repressed sexually and so conservative. I've never been able to understand that combination, but I'm fascinated by it.

Everything you do is so personal. In the end, it doesn't matter so much if you write about your own life or not. It's going to be as much artifice when it comes out as a piece of music. Everything is in character in a way. But that's a great thing.

If you believe that you have nothing to fight for, that just means the people in power, and the people with money, can sneak anything into your life. Everything can be taken away from you.

I've never been good at being nostalgic, and I've never been able to focus on sound without having a voice that's very here-and-now.

On an emotional level, I don't want to be a guide. I want people to hear things and experience them their own way.

I've always been so interested in the way the body feels when singing or being on stage, or being in the audience for that matter. It doesn't have to be the typical "rock" experience. It can be so much more.

When you're outside of genre, you can expose more vulnerability.