Cat Power Quotes

I got bored with the old way - it came too easy. I worked until I could play and chord changes at any tempo in any key, and then said 'What else is there?' Now I'm finding out.

The danger in playing a piece over and over again lies in getting stuck in a rut where you don't ask questions anymore and you always play it the same way.

I love music - really a lot. That's why I do it. But mine just never makes it, to me. There's always something wrong with it, something I want to change. But I like that, because at least it keeps me looking, trying to find ways I can improve, which obviously are a lot.

I love stretching myself musically.

I mean as long as I have been doing music I know I am only 30% of what I could be and want to be.

I've seen and learned enough to keep my music fresh and spread out.

When you start out with goals - mine were to play polytonally and polyrhythmically - you never exhaust that. I started doing that in the 1940s. It's still a challenge to discover what can be done with just those two elements.

I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.

If you look at a lot of the songs I've been involved in, there's always been this retro vibe. I started getting worried that I wasn't moving forward very much, nor was I even in tune with the music today. I almost scoffed at it.

I feel like a lot of the fundamental material, I've assimilated. So now the question is: Am I going to really get into my spiritual inheritance of music and really develop my abilities?

'Just What I Am' took me all of 10 minutes to make. 'Immortal' maybe took 30 minutes. It's not hard for me. 'Indicud' is almost what my first album should have sounded like, had I really been able to channel all of the ideas I had into music.

Every time I hear a recording I've made, I hear all kinds of things I could improve or things I should have done. There's always so much more to be done in music. It's so vast.

You have to be serious, and you must have a constantly inquiring mind. But I find it's new music that really stretches me, both technically and as an interpreter.

Pushing yourself and digging into something new, that's what being a musician is all about.

My playground as a musician is growing.

I think that the only goals that we try to set for ourselves is to evolve musically.

If you go out and just play the old stuff and never write new stuff, you're not really a complete musician, you're a performer.

We'll see some simplistic players for a while, who'll then get into more complicated things and evolve with their instruments. This is a cycle that happens over and over again in music.

Every record, you've got more experiences to draw on as a writer and a musician.

Now, when we first started, I would be playing something good and then feel like I wasn't doing the right thing and launch into some idiotic cliche. Luckily for me, Bobby was patient.

You're a constant student, as a musician.

What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I'm continuing to do. You want to push boundaries, to not always be in your comfort zone. If you don't, you get stale. So you have to find areas of growth.

I think that every band tries to mature their sound through their existence, you know?

Music is all about wanting to be better at it.

For me, making music is a continuous learning experience, and I think that it feeds itself.