When I think of my art tribe - you know, my peeps - there are certain people who are autobiographers that I really love. But for the most part, overwhelmingly, my tribes are the surrealists and the storytellers, in song and literature.

Regina Spektor

Categorized in : Thinking Art Song

I care so much about making things that are useful for people to have and listen to, but I don't care so much that I won't do whatever the hell I want. It's just one of those things.

Regina Spektor

care want people

I'm the hero of this story, I don't need to be saved

Regina Spektor

hero stories needs

The other day I was down by the Hudson River, and I see two nuns in full habit rollerblading down the street holding hands. And I'm like, 'Oh, my God, I get it. The world is surreal and beautiful. And everything is fine.'

Regina Spektor

beautiful beauty inspirational

Love what you have and you'll have more love.

Regina Spektor

This is how it works You're young until you're not You love until you don't You try until you can't You laugh until you cry You cry until you laugh And everyone must breathe Until their dying breath No, this is how it works You peer inside yourself You take the things you like And try to love the things you took And then you take that love you made And stick it into some Someone else's heart Pumping someone else's blood And walking arm in arm You hope it don't get harmed But even if it does You'll just do it all again

Regina Spektor

love-you heart blood

I think that when somebody tells you something of value, a lot of the time there's this thing that happens, and I don't know if you find it, where they go exactly for the word or the moment or the thing that you were hoping they wouldn't notice, or inside didn't feel 100 percent secure about. If they point it out, then that really sends you the message of, "Okay, I was trying to override my own instincts about it, and I guess I shouldn't."

Regina Spektor

messages trying thinking

I've been thinking a lot about space. It was one of those slow-motion realisations how little we are, how far we are from everything else in our solar system. This idea of distance started kind of haunting me. How do you go forth and accomplish things but not end up leaving everything you started out with in the dust?

Regina Spektor

distance space thinking

I think it's ridiculous that we even have to talk about gay rights as rights...It's gonna be as shocking as the treatment of slaves someday.

Regina Spektor

gay rights thinking

So break me to small parts, let go in small doses, but spare some for spare parts.

Regina Spektor

rejection break letting-go

I'm much more drawn to fiction, to short stories, and to plays, than I am to diarists.

Regina Spektor

stories play fiction

I was a kid, and I was very excited to experience this whole new world. And everything was fun, everything from, oh, wow, we get bananas - I'd only seen them in picture books, you know - to, like, the diversity of the neighborhood and to explore Judaism for the first time. It was really hushed in the Soviet Union.

Regina Spektor

fun kids book

You get to be your own curator of your own exhibits inside.

Regina Spektor

curator exhibits

I feel different. You know this many times over, because you are a parent, but it transforms you. It's this incredible experience where, in one way, you are still very much yourself, and in some ways you become even more connected to the rest of yourself. All of a sudden, you just get more connected to your child self, and your teenage self, and all these selves that you've maybe been abandoning at every date post that you pass.

Regina Spektor

teenage self children

I would really hate it if I could call up Kafka or Hemingway or Salinger and any question I could throw at them they would have an answer. That's the magic when you read or hear something wonderful - there's no one that has all the answers.

Regina Spektor

magic hate answers

Pick a star on the dark horizon and follow the light.

Regina Spektor

stars light dark

The piano is not firewood -- yet.

Regina Spektor

firewood piano

Every morning I wake up with a purpose and a smirk

Regina Spektor

smirk purpose morning

You're part of the human fabric of experience. You don't have to have cancer to write about cancer. You don't have to have somebody close to you die to understand what death is. Definitely, the more you live, the more experiences fall into your spectrum. As a writer, you must have been told: Write about what you know. But Kafka didn't. Gogol didn't. Did Shakespeare write only what he knew? Our own selves are limitless. And our capacity for empathy is giant.

Regina Spektor

cancer writing fall

I saw certain things that I think maybe other kids are protected from. Like, I saw my parents struggling. I knew that we were cutting out coupons and buying dented cans because they were cheaper. And all our furniture was from the garbage. It was just - and to me because I was a kid, all that stuff was really exciting.

Regina Spektor

cutting struggle kids

I just think music is one of those frontiers where people really want the "I" to be you.

Regina Spektor

want people thinking