Amanda Palmer Quotes

I always have music playing in my studio when I design. It really gets me in the mood and allows me to focus.

I don't write a great song every day. I don't write a great song every couple weeks. It comes in such random times.

I'm not very prolific. I'm not good at sitting down as an artist and saying 'Okay, I need to put in my four hours today.'

I don't generally listen to music while working, but sometimes music can help me get past minor writer's block.

Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work.

Usually, I create tunes that are fragmented. I think the biggest obstacle for people with their creativity is that they feel they have to sit down and create this finished, polished product.

I do not believe in inspiration, but I must have a title in order to work, otherwise I am lost.

The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.

I've never really suffered complete and utter writer's block, really. I equate it with sex: in the beginning of my career, I was writing five songs a week; now, I occasionally write a song. But it's an exciting moment when it happens!

Some of the best songs I've written, I've written in 10 minutes.

There are days when I'll write for 15 minutes and have to give up and move around, and I'll write another paragraph and give up again. On other days I get intensely - focused on the process, sit down at 8 A.M. and won't get up until 8 P.M.

I have no discipline, which is a horrible flaw for any writer. Once I'm well started on a project, though, then I'm addicted to it all day long. When it's done, I collapse and have to really kick myself to start a new one.

There's no writer's block; there's only distraction.

I get a lot of my songwriting done while driving around Nashville - sometimes it comes to me that way.

Better to write twaddle, anything, than nothing at all.

Song ideas have come to me in the middle of interviews, in the shower, or while I'm writing another song.

Writing is very good for household tasks. Because you'd rather fix a dripping tap or paint an old wall - you'd rather do almost anything than sit and write. I have to reach a point of obsession in order to write, and so I find starting a book incredibly difficult.

I have nothing like a writing routine. I sometimes have trouble buckling down to write at home.

I can't just sit down and make a song in a day. It's only possible if you focus on the music and not the sound.

For a long time, I would write without music, because I thought it was distracting until I appreciated that it actually unlocks a certain unconscious productivity vault in my mind.

I go into my workroom seven mornings a week. There will only be one or two mornings a week where it seems to be going well, but to earn those days you have to go through slow, slodgy days where your mind feels like porridge.

When I finished a song that I thought was good, I thought, I don't know where that came from, so I have no idea if I can do that again. I'm talking like, a hundred and fifty songs down the line. I still feel that.

I'm not always as disciplined as I should be. I don't sit down and write every day, but I should.

My writing life is always a bit disorganized. It's hard for me to get going, but sometimes, once I begin, I go like the wind.

One reason I don't suffer Writer's Block is that I don't wait on the muse, I summon it at need.