P. J. Harvey Quotes

The key to good art is to make something that means something to you.

It turned out so well because it was the first album that I could identify with in terms of lyrics. ("Captain Fantastic") It was passionate...I could associate myself with every song...It's a unique album in our history. This was the story of us..."Curtains", the lyrics to that are so beautiful because it sums up our friendship so much, and our relationship.

Artists are like messengers. A song is authored by you, but its interpretation is owned by other people. And you have no control over that.

As a musician, you never understand why people connect with certain songs.

I'm not really interested in music. Music is just a means of creating a magical state.

Art is basically communication, and I think everyone who's a music lover has had that experience where a record or a recording has kept you company when no one else is around. And I think that is what I'm hoping that people get out of my music.

I wanted to get to that aesthetic proposition that comes out of learning the human elements of a world, so that those notes and rhythms mean something to you besides just the academic way in which they fall in place.

It's nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn't think of.

One of my goals in making music is to make the world seem bigger, and life seem larger.

It makes me feel great, knowing my songs are being heard and of service to people.

The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves.

The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.

People tell me all the time that my songs help them express things to loved ones that they may not be able to say themselves.

People should be free to take whatever they want from music and I think that over time I realized that different people always find different things in my songs, which is really good.

For people to link my music to their lives, it's incredible, there's no other feeling like it.

My goal is to connect with people emotionally. I take life’s experiences and translate them into music — music that hopefully creates an impact on the listener.

Music isn't about music, it's about life.

Once they're on paper, they're gone. I like to do as much with the words, as far as image goes, so that it's really left open for a lot of things, even though I remember a specific impression of something I had at the time. I can't say a song is about this or that; in fact, I wouldn't even want to. I just prefer to have people live it anyway they want. Because it's theirs after that. There's nothing I can do about it anymore

I don't expect everyone to get something deep out of it. Some people can just listen to the music, or get their aggressions out, but I think with any great painting or movie, album or whatever it is, it's better if people can take what they need from it. That they're not forced to get some particular message.

Anything that happens after I write a song...that's fine with me. It's up to the listener to read into it what they need from it. And that's part of the reason I write like I do, so I can leave the holes in the right places so people can say, 'Yeah, that happened to me,' and they're able to have their own little fantasy about it.

I think "artistic" simply means there's more of the creator in the thing. Whether it's painting or song or movie or game, the creator puts more of themselves into the piece, so when the audience see it, they feel something real, they feel something human, they feel something that's like a person.

I know not every song has to be a powerful message.

There are so many things to be considered in making music. The whole question of life itself... I know that I want to produce beautiful music, music that does things to people that they need.

Poems are other people's snapshots in which we see our own lives.

When I listen to my songs, they seem like pieces of music or art, like a painting that you look at. The reality is that, yes, when I wrote the songs upstairs or wherever, I was writing very specifically about my life or a specific subject matter that's very personal. I've never shied away from that. The vocals and the performance that come after the record, I don't think of that as confessional, but the core of the music is completely. It makes sense that people would see that as being the main thing. I guess not everyone is able to speak so candidly.