PJ Harvey quotes:

People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.

People have a tendency to see country life through rose-colored glasses.

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

I'm finding my way, and I make mistakes.

Well, I'm quite a self-deprecating person.

I firmly disbelieve that one has to be a tortured soul to write good music.

I think of myself as a songwriter, a weaver of story and imagination in a way that a novelist might write a book.

I'm finding that writing poetry is strengthening my songwriting, because you're learning to make a piece of writing work on a page with nothing else. I was also finding within poetry I felt a lot more free to write about very different matters, to write about social issues or things that are going on around me.

The craft, the writing of a song, is about creating a story, a life story, a world within three minutes, but that's the frame, if you like, the picture frame. That fascinates me.

Ive always been very visceral in that I feel things very deeply.

I think blues music is music of the soul. Of course, there are other forms. You could call some classical music blues music in that way.

People have this idea of me being some kind of monster, and that's the complete opposite of who I am.

[Writing] has helped me meet people.

At this point in my life, I'm probably not gonna be able to stop writing because it's gonna help me be able to do what I need to do.

Ever since time began: What song is not about love? Whether it's about love from man to woman or parent to child, or grandmother to granddaughter... It just goes on and on. Or whether it's the love of one's country.

First off, I think nudity is taken differently in America, though they did make a fuss in England, too.

My father is actually a quarry man - he deals in stone. He also at one point had a lot of sheep, he owned a sheep farm, but primarily the family business was in stone.

[I] try to do both because the writing for me, to be a new artist, the writing is gonna pay the bills.

And all of these writers offer me a greater understanding of what it is to be alive, and that is such an incredible thing art can do for other people. It made me want to try and get close to this strange, mysterious thing that people can do with words.

Any of these contemporary war situations, whether civilian or soldier on either side - that's what I was interested in. The people who are being affected. Not so much the political speak at the top of the food chain, but the people who are affected by it on the ground.

As far as in my adult life, it kinda started (with) writing first 'cause I went to school in Nashville. I mean, not Nashville but close to Nashville, and I met my managers in L.A. at a convention randomly. And then, it kinda just started from there. And then, I got my publishing deal.

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.

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

Being a recording artist and having thousands of people listening to your music and singing your songs, and paying for it? It feels great!

But even when I do give interviews, I always come across as such a completely different person. It seems like there's no controlling it anyway.

But huge photographs of dead bodies are slightly different. I couldn't find much humor there.

Everything from a lifetime's worth of collecting things. You know as we go through life, and something stays and ends up on your shelf and lives there until you die? Just those little things.

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

Folk music was to strengthen and unify people, whether it was through an uprising and rebellion or whether is was through hard work, bringing in crops. But it was to strengthen each other and that's still what music is about today.

I always wanted to be an artist. I think I was just waiting on somebody to approve me and be like, "Oh, okay, you should be an artist," you know 'cause it wasn't until I stopped looking for approval that I could actually do it.

I am someone that follows the news and reads newspapers yet what do you believe and what don't you.

I come from an art-school background, and I still feel that in my music, it's about exploration and challenging myself, about putting myself in a place that's frightening because I haven't been there before.

I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do, then I'm myself, and if I don't, then I give nothing.

I did photography, painting, and drawing, but I prefer sculpture. I like it because it's very physical.

I didn't even know the industry of songwriting existed. I thought everybody sang songs and they were only singing the songs that they wrote. So after I found out about songwriting in college, I was like, "Okay, I want to do that."

I didn't know folk music growing up, no. It's something I've come to study, really, because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication, the traveling storyteller, the bard, the minstrels.

I do take enormous interest in what's going on. I try to see whatever I can, whenever I can.

I do write a lot of prose. It's not disciplined enough yet that it's actually become stories, or short stories. The idea of writing a novel seems impossible.

I don't hold onto anything, because it's a waste of energy to do so, really. There's nothing that I can do about the way people want to write about me. I just try and concentrate on my work and do that as well as I can.

I don't loathe interviews, I'm just one of those people who makes music because I find it difficult to talk.

I enjoy looking like a tart and thinking like a politician.

I feel like "Not For Long" was one for me just because I got to work with two people that I looked up to.

I feel like I make a soundtrack for the come up, and I feel like there's so many people that's trying to figure out how to chase their dreams, or that are in the process of chasing their dreams, so they connect with that. And then being a singer, you don't really get to touch on nothing either.

I feel like I'm being put inside a box, and I'm not necessarily getting a chance. Like I'm not getting the shot that I deserve. So that's what Rare is about 'cause I feel because I am the way that I am, and I don't necessarily fit the mold of a lot of different artists that's out, it's like I'm not getting the chance to show what I can do. So, that's basically all the frustration of that, and everything is pretty much Rare for me anyway.

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.

I feel like the actual, the most beautiful thing about a song is that it is something that goes out there in the universe and people use it in the way that they need it in their lives.

I feel like when I'm writing for other people, when I'm doing rap hooks, it's kinda like playing dress up for me.

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.

I grab an instrument to make my body a song, but I'm not a player as such, maybe a little more on guitar, but certainly not piano.

I had a chip on my shoulders 'cause I felt like I was being overlooked.

I just love having no clothes on outside, and the only time to do that is when the sun's shining. It's a wonderful sensation to not have any clothes on.

I just started writing and writing for people. And then, like I guess after (a) year of getting some placements, I kinda got a shot to be an artist. Long story short I think, yeah.

I long ago learned that you can't expect people to interpret the songs in the way they had meant for you, as the writer.

I make tiny wooden people with bits of hair. Puppets and things like that.

I never feel that I have to adopt a character. It's more the way I choose to present the music and that's always based on what is right for the song.

I really don't pay too much attention; I don't go out of my way to read any interviews.

I see men come and go, but there'll be one who'll collect my soul.

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

I think a lot of people have an idealistic view - if you grow up in the country, there can't possibly be anything wrong with you.

I think I just speak on what the regular people are going through outside of love 'cause, of course, there's always gonna be a love song, but there's so many other parts of life... being lost, feeling your way around, what you gonna do next.

I think I'm a maker of songs, and songs are like films or a picture: You put them over there, and they have nothing to do with you.

I think I've been interested in music since I was little.

I think Ive got a pretty good sense of humor.

I think that most art is asking a question or is looking for something, looking for answers and that is what life seems to be about for most people.

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 think you have to be very careful getting the balance right if you're going to talk about grand themes like war, death and nationhood. You need to use the right language or don't do it at all.

I tried to use words that were dealing with the emotional quality that any human being could recognize in the way that they felt about their country. It's to do with the world we live in. That world is a brutal one and full of war. It's also full of many wonderful things and love and hope

I try to see as much dance, theatre and films as I can because all of it feeds me in a way that I need feeding for what I do.

I was like just writing and writing and then I kinda developed my sound. And then, my managers were like, "Okay, we're gonna try to get a deal." And then first it was Interscope, and then it was Atlantic. And then, I ended up signing with Atlantic, but it was like a long process, a really long... it was A LONG PROCESS. I feel like it took me two years to do it.

I was really influenced by a lot of Disney soundtracks, because that's what I used to watch all the time, and they always put music in it, which is why I tend to have popular melodies over harder beats.

I was working with D'Mile - he's amazing! And I don't know, it was like that guitar riff was so crazy to me, and so I think I was frustrated about something that happened earlier and I feel like I'm just a good guy, I don't cut people off, I don't really call people out when they do stuff that they should be called out on, and I'm just always the one being the bigger person. So, that day "Gangster" just came out. That's just how I feel in that day to day life.

I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing, and I don't ever feel like I'm working in a cycle in that respect, because it's every day anyway, no matter what I'm doing. Then I get to a point when I've collected together enough words that seem like they want to be songs rather than poems, or sometimes not.

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

I would listen most particularly to the countries whose language I didn't understand, didn't know what they were singing. But being a singer myself, I could understand because of the emotion.

I would never feel confident enough to express my views and opinions as the right ones because I just don't think that's possible. There are so many sides to everything that nobody is right or wrong.

I'd want to read the stories that I'd written, I'd want to show the drawings that I made. That was just purely natural. So I knew I wanted to go into the arts in some way and that I'd want to show that work in some way.

Ideas for songs can come from something as simple as a photograph and letting my imagination run wild on an old photograph that I found, or to a film that I have seen or to just most of the time, just daily walking through life and keeping your eyes open.

If anything, I hope being an artist opens up more opportunities 'cause I feel there's a lot of things I could do, like musically and stylistic-wise that I can write, but I don't really have an avenue to show it 'cause most of the things I'm writing are in Hip Hop.

If you come at the record feeling really happy and optimistic, it can be incredibly beautiful and uplifting, and if you come at it in a bleak moment, it can feel like a very dark place to share. It's all down to the listener.

If you want to be good at anything, you have to work hard at it. It doesn't just fall from the sky. I work every day at trying to improve my writing, and I really enjoy it. Nothing fascinates me more than putting words together, and seeing how a collection of words can produce quite a profound effect.

I'm a very private person, so obviously I don't enjoy talking about more personal matters. But at the same time I care very much about my work and I would like people to know that it exists. So I appreciate that there's a meeting point, where I would like people to know about the work that I'm doing, and that requires me to talk about it.

I'm a visual artist myself and always have been so it's very natural for me to be very concerned with presentation, whether it's artwork or onstage.

I'm always trying to swim to new ground.

I'm always writing, the past 10 years. A lot has changed, in that it's something I do every day.

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

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.

I'm not an autobiographical writer, but I am a writer who deals with human emotion on all levels.

I'm probably much more influenced by film-makers and painters than I am by other songwriters or poets,

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.

In the past members of my family on both my mother's and father's side have fought in the war, in the first and second World Wars. Unfortunately, they're dead and I wasn't able to speak to them, but that was in our family history too.

In the same way, I write some of my more difficult pieces when I'm at very happy stages in my life.

It [ "Not For Long"] was the biggest song that I've had, and I actually heard it on the radio multiple times.

It varies, I don't think there is any one set way of writing songs or coming up with ideas, it comes in so many ways you know.

It's good to feel excited by the environment you're in.

It's so interesting to me how songs take on a shape and body of their own and grow.

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

It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent. Therefore I keep reaching for instruments I don't particularly know how to play, and then I become excited. That gives me energy to want to make new things, and it forces me to hear things in new ways, which then can only help to say things in a new way.

I've always been very interested in the visual aspect of what I do.

I've always been very politically interested from a very young age and I hadn't felt that was something I could begin to bring into my songwriting because I hadn't felt I'd reached the stage, that I had the skill with language enough, yet, to do that.

I've always felt profoundly about what's going on in the world on a daily basis. What I hadn't felt was that I was at a point in my writing career where I could write about these things in songs and do it well.

I've been so used to being supported by musicians, and I don't class myself as a particularly adept musician on instruments. I think I'm a songwriter.

I've so much left to explore, it's enormously exciting to me. It's a passion. I just try and get better at what I do, and I study it very hard, like it is my life degree.

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.

Love for money is my sin, any man calls, I'll let him in.

Maybe I'm just purely lucky. If I've come up against obstacles I've always found another way around it.

Maybe you're a singer or not, but what taps into the soul leads to the heart, and that's really what I came away with, with the starting point for the record being that I could speak as a human being and feel things very deeply.

Most of the stuff that I do talk about, about being counted out and being an underdog, 'cause that's what I feel like I am.

My mom is a sculptress.

My town was even smaller. Only six hundred people. We didn't have a grocery store.

Never settle for anything less than you want.

Obviously, the emotions I want to convey through music are streamed through the way I interpret life.

People want to build musicians into mythical beings.

Shame is the shadow of love.

Some people, like Leonard Cohen, write one album every 10 years, and labor over a song for five years at a time.

Some things lend themselves well to songs, some things don't, and I'm learning that a lot at the moment. It's still a relatively new way of writing. It's only really the last five to 10 years that I've taken my writing seriously in this way, as something I can keep working toward. I think I feel myself much more before as simply a songwriter.

The devil wanders into my soul.

The first song I heard from me was Meek Mill ["I Don't Know"], it was his first single before he went (to jail). I remember the first time I heard it was like eleven thirty at night, and I was like, "Yo, this is crazy!" And, I was smiling from ear to ear.

The way I make music is unique to myself and the way I have lived my life - no one else would tell that story in the same way that I do.

There is a thread connecting you no matter how far away you are from someone and you know I have two or three relationships in my life that are like that.

There is nothing more boring than doing singing exercises.