Laura Marling quotes:

I've always loved books by the Bronte sisters. I love Jane Austen, too. I'm more influenced by people like her than by pop culture.

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.

People don't appreciate music any more. They don't adore it. They don't buy vinyl and just love it. They love their laptops like their best friend, but they don't love a record for its sound quality and its artwork.

I love the way you can fall in love with a piece of literature; how words alone can get your heart doing that.

I'm reluctantly interested in love and helplessly interested in logic and yet they're so conflicting. And they're both necessary for a happy balance, a happy existence... I think.

I know there are lots of positives in the evolution of technology, but I also think it will be responsible for the end of a unique character, of a specific kind of geographical culture. The world is getting so small, and mass production is getting so big. Everything is in danger of becoming the same.

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.

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

I'm incredibly neurotic and a control freak. I like the thought that if there's going to be anyone to blame it's going to be me.

I feel increasingly like age is very irrelevant. Quite often, cynicism is confused with wisdom, and my scorn is confused with a knowing, which I don't have.

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.

It is quite hard to relax in London. I always say I'd move somewhere quieter, but I am a bit of a confirmed urbanite now - it crept up on me without me noticing. I always think that I function quite well on my own, unusually so, but then I'm reminded how important people are to me.

I'm a songwriter, and I understand artistic licence. We can embellish, go on little journeys and explore our inner selves. It can be quite self-indulgent.

I'm not religious, I'm not romantic and I live purely by logic. I make every decision by logic and sometimes that leads me to the right and sometimes to the wrong decision.

I feel sometimes that I'm in a constant state of being lost in translation, and I guess that why I write songs.

Age is relative. Experience is relative. And I think often intensity is confused with maturity.

People think I look odd onstage. But the way I deal with being incredibly nervous is by concentrating really hard.

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

Lover please do not fall to your knees it's not like I believe in everlasting love

I need some isolation, it's necessary to me, that's just who I am. I need to be left alone.

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

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

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

If I don't have an outlet in which to express myself...throug h songwriting or other mediums...I get a bit jittery.

I know how ridiculous this sounds because of the job I do but I don't believe in romanticism and make-believe.

I feel like I'm creeping closer to finding the situation that triggers songwriting, which is obviously an extreme of an emotion.

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

I'm a lot more observational than personal in my writing. My writing is mostly a lot of questions without answers.

I've noticed that, with many of the authors I like, I tend to think I would dislike them as human beings or that there'd be a healthy amount of debate if I ever did meet them.

A friend is a friend forever And a good one will never leave, never

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

But if i sit here and weep I'll be blown over by the slightest of breeze

I am quite competitive. In stupid things like card games.

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

I definitely tell things at arm's length but that is conscious. No part of me wants everybody to know what's going on.

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

I don't need to sell tons of records, but I want longevity. I want to make music for the rest of my life.

I find it dull when my heart meets my mind

I like living in the city, but I like being able to get out of it as and when I like.

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 remember my father playing me Same Situation when I was a nipper, and saying how nobody since has done melodies as well as Joni Mitchell. I concur. The thing that most affected me was just her resonance, and that is something she must have been born with.

I speak because I can to anyone I trust enough to listen.

I think everybody who relates to music is kind of isolated. It's lonely. Everyone who uses the creative side of their brain is that much removed from reality. They are looking for answers wherever they can find them.

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 was an incredibly misanthrope. I couldn't relate to people my age, and I'm not sure why, as I wasn't particularly smart or interesting

I would never sit and write a song in front of anyone, because you're so vulnerable. I don't know at what point in the process that it becomes acceptable to pass them on. When a song wants to be written, it will be written. When it does come, I will very rarely go back and edit lyrics. I'm quite a rational human being, and the only part of my life that I can't rationalise, or can't make sense of, is how a song gets written or why.

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

I'm the first to admit that I'm still pretty young,

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

Itâ??s hard to accept yourself as someone you donâ??t desire / As someone you donâ??t want to be.

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. I feel like it must be universal. Everybody must know that somewhere.

I've got my laptop, but it troubles me in many ways. I don't have Twitter or Facebook or anything like that. It ruins a romantic idea, which might just be an illusion, a sense of depth or continuity. I know there are lots of positives in the evolution of technology, but I also think it will be responsible for the end of a unique character, of a specific kind of geographical culture. The world is getting so small, and mass production is getting so big. Everything is in danger of becoming the same.

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

No one starts playing my kind of music to make a fortune. But I do want to keep doing what I do and I do want to continue selling records. And I would, eventually, quite like some money.

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

Take me somewhere I can grow Give me something let me go Tell me something I don't know

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

There's huge amounts of nonsense that goes with everything surrounding music and art. All the things you have to do promote yourself - there's huge amounts of nonsense.

When a song wants to be written, it will be written.

Why fear death? Be scared of living.

Womanhood is something you dont consider until it hits you.

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