Katherine Anne Porter Quotes

The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to. As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all we must dare to fail. You must be willing to risk everything to really express it all.

Once I wrote 'Atmosphere,' I thought, 'This is my story; it's me and my life and what I've gone through to get to where I am.' I'm not the best singer, but still. All of my albums are personal, but putting myself out there and singing is one more thing that makes me vulnerable - one more thing that people can fire shots at.

You have to be willing to be afraid if you're going to be an artist.

They lyrical content has grown more introspective and less abstract. I don't know if that's good or bad... Sometimes it feels a little raw to be putting so much of myself out there.

I've learned that to expose yourself, to reveal yourself is a test of your humanness.

You must take the risk to disclose yourself in order to become more real, more human. And even if the price is high.

Some people are attracted to vulnerability. From my very first album, I've been vulnerable. I've always given parts of me, parts of my life - good, bad, ugly. I've never put up this image as a super-thug. Also, some people just like the music.

When you write, you don't really think of how honest you are being - it's only when you record that you understand how much of yourself you're giving.

There's things that I say that people wouldn't say. And just putting across my vulnerability as a person in my music as well. A lot of people wouldn't do that, everyone wants to be hard.

art is exposure. And until you've developed a degree of maturity to handle that knowledge, you are revealing what other people keep hidden.

At its heartmeat core, writing is about exploring the questions of your heart on the assumption that what intrigues you, what inflames or amuses or ennobles you, will have the same effect on someone else. It's about taking chances, and taking risks, and pushing yourself to be honest in the issues that present themselves.

Sometimes you have to be less ashamed about writing a bad poem than you would be about being silent.

You can hide so much behind theatrics, and I don't need to do that any more.

That's quite a difficult thing in life, to be who you are. And when you are doing interviews, you kind of feel this need to say something interesting.

It's how I express myself - through storytelling and characters. They often reveal very intimate, vulnerable sides of myself.

Maybe I could have been good as a drawer if I had done it as much as I did writing, but it's more scary to draw. It's more revealing. You can't disguise yourself in drawing.

One of the things I did when I discovered this huge importance of being vulnerable is very happily moved away from the shame research, because that's such a downer, and people hate that topic. It's not that vulnerability is the upside, but it's better than shame, I guess.

It's that beautiful thing to love your weaknesses, your insecurities, and then put them all on blast. That's why I started writing, and that's why it was so hard to do it in public.

With music, you're really showing someone a piece of your soul. You're saying, 'This is mine. I wrote this, I made this, I'm performing this. This is how I'm presenting it to you.' There's something really scary about that, but there's also something next-worldly about it, too.

Writing songs is super intimate. It's a bit like getting naked.

Anyone who wants to know who I am can just read my lyrics - I've always written about who I am.

Be willing to share all of who you are. So many of us want a partner, but we're not willing to show all of us.

I think sexy is vulnerability, and there's no way you can act vulnerable. It just has to be there.

Really, as a writer, I believe that if you're going to write about your own life, you need to do it as honestly and candidly as you are capable.

Everything I write is highly personal, but put in such a way that it's not dropping everything in someone's lap. Although sometimes I think 'The Taxi Ride' embarrasses me, because sometimes I think it's too close.