Quotes by Joanna Newsom

“Maybe a good goal would be to just at least always try to create something good. Like something that is connected to love in some way. Like the [musical] equivalent ofyou can make a decision to be ...”

“I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilightNo I was all horns and thorns sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright.”

“The thing that I was experiencing and dwelling on the entire time is that there are so many things that are not OK and that will never be OK again. But theres also so many things that are OK and go...”

“Among the responsibilities of any writer is that, no matter what else, they know what they mean. So, even if no one else knows what you're talking about, you do. The listener can sense that, even i...”

“In the sinking sand,where weve come to rest,have I had a hand in your loneliness?”

“I wasn't interested in writing music that wasn't beautiful for me to listen to.”

“In the sinking sand,where we’ve come to rest,have I had a hand in your loneliness?”

“I have a lot of interest in interior rhyming; not just rhyming at the end of the lines, but playing around with rhymes within the lines, playing with where the syllabic emphases in the sentences ar...”

“I'm not terribly interested in playing harp on other people's music right now. Partly because I feel like many people view the harp as this kind of gimmick. You know, like they have songs that are ...”

“My voice in combination with the harp - which, by the way, I use because I've played it my entire life, not to make some statement about the harp - somehow has … coloured people's interpretations o...”

“Well, Nabokov is definitely my favorite author, though I feel strange calling him an influence, since I can't trace the ways in which his writing may or may not have seeped into my own. But I also ...”

“[The title] was the last thing that I chose, after all the songs and the cover art were finished. So none of the songs directly allude to that myth. But the main themes that emerge out of that myth...”

“I don't necessarily see the elements that I invoke on the cover and in the songs as being in binary opposition. I know certain binary tensions emerge between these elements, but a lot of times they...”

“I can't call them linear narratives, and I can't call them chronological in a traditional, classical sense; I'm sure there's plenty of stuff I borrow more from William Faulkner than William Shakesp...”

“We sailed away on a winter's dayWith fate as malleable as clayBut ships are fallible, I sayAnd the nautical, as all things, fades.”

“And a thimble's worth of milky moonCan touch hearts larger than a thimble.”

“I killed my dinnerwith karatekicked him in the face,taste the body, shallow work is the work that I do.”

“And all that we built, and all that we breathedAnd all that we spilled or pulled up like weeds Is piled up in back and it burns irrevocablyAnd we spoke up in turns 'til the silence crept over me.”

“And the love we hold, and the love we spurn, Will never grow cold, only taciturn”

“Go to sleep, you stunning sky, gently creep, cunning byA quiet hum is amplified by your thumb that you suck dryA hundred raging waters snare the lonely sighHold your breath and clasp at Cassiopeia.”