Bat for Lashes Quotes

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Bat for Lashes

Profession : Musician

Birth : October 25, 1979

I was a nursery school teacher, and I worked with youth groups. I loved that job. It was exhausting, but you got a lot back - all their purity and insight and innocence is so on the surface, and they're so unrepressed; they'd really scream at you and then give you a massive kiss.

Bat for Lashes

I had Hallowe'en parties every year, as it was my birthday five days before. My parents would actually put prosthetic noses on, and my dad would wear a top-hat and tails, put on a fake curly moustache, and hold a pipe.

Bat for Lashes

My dad was a Muslim and would pray five times a day. I would pray with him as much as I could, in the morning before school. Sometimes he would tell us moralistic tales about genies, magic carpets and wondrous lands. My mother is not religious - she's just English.

Bat for Lashes

To be a great artist, you need to know yourself as best as you possibly can. I live my life and delve into my own psyche. It's more about exploring how I feel rather than making pale imitations of something that came before. We are unique beings, and the way we look at things is our own.

Bat for Lashes

David Bowie worked with Brian Eno and dressed up in extraordinary clothes, but he was also a brilliant songwriter who captured the thoughts of a generation. He was hugely successful, without compromise.

Bat for Lashes

I'm not really frightened by experimenting - that's the main thing. I really like mixing very old beautiful pieces that are from thrift shops or that have some historical value with quite new futuristic things.

Bat for Lashes

I could talk for ages about how women are amazing, but essentially we shouldn't be manipulated by the media's expectations of our bodies. I'd recommend every woman to read 'Women Who Run with the Wolves' - it's about being in touch with your more wild, free and powerful side.

Bat for Lashes

I feel empathy for people who are trapped in a prison of self-consciousness in an uncomfortable way. We can be free, but we're so held back. So perhaps that's why I feel a duty to make my work. I feel liberated when I'm doing it, and I want other people to feel liberated through it.

Bat for Lashes

I have lots of clothes that I don't wear because I'm bad for impulse buying. They sit in my cupboard looking forlorn, but if I haven't worn something for a couple of months, I usually realise that it would be much better off in one of my friends' wardrobes.

Bat for Lashes

There's something in me that loves to inspire people: when I'm playing music, I imagine all this sparkly stardust going through everyone. I want to make people come alive.

Bat for Lashes

The way you wield your power is about using it to afford you opportunities that you wouldn't otherwise have. So I'm very creatively ambitious, and I just hope people notice it; that's all I want.

Bat for Lashes

I don't think music is the first thing I turn to. For me, I think visual art is more the thing. Sometimes when I've been doing music for a while, I can't really take any more in.

Bat for Lashes

I think there's a karmic purpose that souls make before they decide to come into people's bodies and become someone's parent, or become someone's child. Maybe my dad disappearing was his way of giving me material with which to work, or a predisposition to feel heightened emotions.

Bat for Lashes

I usually speak with all my drummers so that I write my songs with them in mind, and we'll have bass sounds, choir sounds, and then you can multi-task with all these orchestral sounds. Through the magic medium of technology, I can play all kinds of sounds - double bass and stuff.

Bat for Lashes

When I was little, I grew up in a place called Hertfordshire, which is just near London, but out in the country, and I visited Pakistan in the summers to go and see my family on my dad's side.

Bat for Lashes

The creative part of your brain needs to be stimulated. Sometimes you get blocked in the thing you do, because there's so much pressure to do it.

Bat for Lashes

I get invited to premieres, and I've been to a few fashion shows and stuff, but I always get really bored. I feel quite awkward. You have to wear something by them, and it all feels like, 'Why am I doing free advertising for you?'

Bat for Lashes

When I was young, I wanted to be a writer or painter. I was always writing stories, and I excelled at drawing. My teachers encouraged my art work. When I was 9 or 10, I began learning piano and started writing music.

Bat for Lashes

I think Deborah Harry has a really sexy, cool and quite playful sex-kitten kind of style I really like.

Bat for Lashes

In a repressed society, artists fulfil a sense of harking back to instant gratification, or immediate expression, by doing things that function on the edge of society, or outside of what is conventionally accepted.

Bat for Lashes