Sharon Van Etten Quotes

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

Obviously I wouldn't have said that three or four years ago in the midst of it. But I really believe that. It's been a marvelous and important experience.

We were playing, not for the drunks, but for the musicians, because it was more intellectually challenging. We needed somewhere to put our energy to show that we were growing, and as we started to achieve this, people came to hear us musically.

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

Most good things happen with time; especially music, which needs time to breathe and to find its own way.

My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.

I think people have been really receptive to understanding that I've grown up and the music's going to sound a little different.

I feel like my music has become a lot of things. It's hard to label the evolution, but I like there to be an evolution. I just like to paint with all different kinds of colors.

You could say, 'Oh, we're gonna write the heaviest album of all time' or 'We're gonna write an album that sounds like 'Iowa.'' Even if we set out to try to do so, it would never compare. We're not those people anymore, we're not that band anymore.

People always want to talk about who I was, but I've always been singing, always been experimenting with pop music.

Over the years, I played with a couple of spectacular guitar players, and playing with them has made me play better than I knew how to play. I hope the same thing is true with acting.

What I was going for in the first two albums I didn't necessarily achieve. Because I was young and because it was my first time out. And the second album was such a 'quickie' sort of 'Let's just get it over with!' But the kind of music I make, there's a lot of subtlety in it. And I think it takes a couple of listens to actually really get it.

I've been making music for a long time, since I was very young, but at the same time, I'm still exploring what works for me. I feel like I'm just starting out.

I think you only see experiences as defining moments with distance.

What's that line from TS Eliot? To arrive at the place where you started, but to know it for the first time. I'm able to write about a breakup from a different place. Same brokenness. Same rock-bottom. But a little more informed, now I'm older. Thank God for growing up.

I know a lot of people weren't expecting 'BLACKSummers'Night' to be what it was, just like a lot of people weren't expecting 'Embrya' to be what it was. People will listen to what I've been a part of and see what I've done.

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

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.

When you start reading a piece together, you get a sense of someone's basic philosophy of music without saying a word. You realize the other person's approach, how they express themselves, the kind of restraint they show, all those things.

Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen.

The more I compose, the more I know that I don't know it all. I think it's a good way to start. If you think you know it all, the work becomes a repetition of what you've already done. I try to make sure that I don't repeat my music.

Sometimes you don't understand what you're going through until you're on the other side of it.

I titled the album Reflections because I am reflecting on my music career.

There's a lot of music at my fingertips that I can be influenced by. And just because I play a horn, I don't need to sound, or try to capture, what was happening before me. I can just respect it and learn from it.

Success is a wonderful thing, but it tends not to be the sort of experience that we learn from. We enjoy it; perhaps we even deserve it. But we don't acquire wisdom from it.