P. J. Harvey Quotes

When I give over to somebody's vision rather than have an idea of what I need to do, it takes me to places I wouldn't have got to by myself. I'm always attracted to a strong director.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

I've heard my work called 'bold' and 'graffiti-like,' but for me it is always instinctual. I start with a shape or a colour and go from there.

I didn't choose a word or anything. I just wrote the song until it stopped.

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.

I paint according to the moment and the theme. I don't have any prejudice. Life concerns me.

Sometimes I think that I want to do something strictly basic, really simple. Just with a few chords. But I won't have anything more than two or three sentences in my head. That kind of evaporates once I start playing and then it goes off in whatever direction.

Then, once I have lyrics, being able to shape them around a song is nothing new for me, I've been doing that for 25 years. The soul searching part of it, the spontaneous part of it, that was, and remains, a really terrific process.

When the muse hits me, or the mood, or whatever it is, I get my guitar out and I empty it out. I just start going through things to see what's going to happen.

A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.

I began in 1976, with small abstract paintings that allowed me to do what I had never let myself do: put something down at random. And then, of course, I realized that it never can be random. It was all a way of opening a door for me. If I don't know what's coming - that is, if I have no hard-and-fast image, as I have with a photographic original - then arbitrary choice and chance play an important part.

When recording, whatever you first think about, you come out with something totally different at the end of it. Whatever plans you have you throw away, because it's always going to end up sounding pretty different from what you initially thought of. I probably only had about five or six songs when I started, and it just sort of flowed from that.

If you understand a painting beforehand, you might as well not paint it.

Stop this agony of wishing Play it out Don't think, don't hesitate Curving back within yourself Just create... Just create

I spent a fair amount of time editing the lyrics and allowing the song to kind of evolve. ... anytime there's anything worthwhile, it certainly 'feels' like it happened on the spur of the moment, but it's a composite of lots of spurs of the moment, hopefully. And over time, you catch up with those, and then you have a full set of lyrics you've thought of and you feel comfortable singing.

If an idea seems to find its way towards a stage setting, that's the direction I take. I don't know if I'm trying to achieve anything other than to follow an idea on to the page.

Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.

I do experiment with lots of different genres. In making music, I don't think of genre like, "I want to do this, because I'm going use that country music sound; I'm going use that hip-hop sound; I'm going use that acoustic [sound]." It's just making music. So now that I've traveled a lot more since I did Acoustic Soul, I'm sure that different sounds will come into place, because I have been exposed to it and I like it. But it's not so much of a conscience effort. It's mind and spirited. You know, we're humans.

When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I'll do, and I am the first one surprised at what comes out.

How lucky is the man who, like Mozart and others, goes to the tavern of an evening and writes some fresh music. For he lives while he is creating.

I don't try to go to the studio and make a single. I just do whatever I feel.

I have an idea of a set of colors and see what I have. A lot of things, the best, more magical things in the paintings just sort of happen. They aren't things I thought of in advance. They are more things I am given. What paint does, in watercolor more than oil but it happens in oil too, are things one never expects if you work freely. I suppose I learned a lot coming to this after years of playing improvisational music. I have to trust my intuition and I work in the moment, when that moment seems to be happening. And to leave it alone when it is not.

There's a responsibility to the story, but there's also the sense of fun you have. When everybody else leaves, you get to continue to create. For me, there's no other way! I really like creating from the ground up.

I usually have an idea that I want to build on and let the music take me where I wanna go.

When we are writing, or painting, or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions, and are opened to a wider world, where colors are brighter, sounds clearer, and people more wondrously complex than we normally realize.