P. J. Harvey Quotes

P. J. Harvey

Profession : Musician

Birth : October 9, 1969

My mom is a sculptress.

P. J. Harvey

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.

P. J. Harvey

I'm a Libra. That means that I can make a decision, but only after much thought.

P. J. Harvey

I think I'm a songwriter. 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.

P. J. Harvey

I'm a very private person, so obviously I don't enjoy talking about more personal matters.

P. J. Harvey

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

P. J. Harvey

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.

P. J. Harvey

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

P. J. Harvey

I literally left school and went straight into music via art college for a year, and I've been so involved in my job of writing songs that the more actively involved part became channeled into standing on the stage and saying things that way.

P. J. Harvey

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.

P. J. Harvey

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.

P. J. Harvey

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.

P. J. Harvey

There is nothing more boring than doing singing exercises.

P. J. Harvey

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

P. J. Harvey

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.

P. J. Harvey

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world, but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well, and it's an ongoing creative assignment.

P. J. Harvey

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.

P. J. Harvey

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.

P. J. Harvey

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.

P. J. Harvey

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.

P. J. Harvey