Well, I'm quite a self-deprecating person. PJ Harvey More Quotes by PJ Harvey More Quotes From PJ Harvey 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. PJ Harvey writing two years 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. PJ Harvey artwork artist natural 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. PJ Harvey song people thinking 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. PJ Harvey writing song thinking I'm doing quite a lot of painting on stones - little funny fish and animals. PJ Harvey stones littles animal I'm probably much more influenced by film-makers and painters than I am by other songwriters or poets. PJ Harvey film poet makers 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. PJ Harvey eye running song 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. PJ Harvey challenges art school I firmly disbelieve that one has to be a tortured soul to write good music. PJ Harvey tortured-souls soul writing 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. PJ Harvey optimistic uplifting beautiful 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. PJ Harvey film song thinking 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. PJ Harvey creating writing song 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. PJ Harvey soul way thinking I don't think that much anymore in terms of 'write a record, record a record, tour a record,' because in my own mind, things have changed, in that I'm just an ongoing artist. I'm not quite sure what the next project needs to be until it presents himself, and then I know. I just follow dutifully while I'm being led. PJ Harvey artist writing thinking 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 PJ Harvey emotional war country I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs. PJ Harvey short-story stories song 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. PJ Harvey together want song There's a level of discipline I use as a writer, designed to get better at what I'm doing, that requires quite a lot of study and quite a lot of hard work as well. PJ Harvey get-better discipline hard-work There's so much you can do with laying words on a bed of music. You can completely change their meaning with the type of music or the way they're sung. PJ Harvey type bed way 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. PJ Harvey long-ago song people
