Melanie Martinez Quotes

I've been really trying to put people onto, like, my sound since I was, like, 17, 16.

I love taking on roles that other people have written for me just as much as I take on writing - just not as much of a, 'Oh, that guy.' I want people to start saying, 'Oh, Brett Gelman's new piece is coming out. That's a Brett Gelman movie. That's a a Brett Gelman show.'

I feel like I've mastered Dave East. For a long time I was trying to figure out who I was and what sound I wanted to come with.

It seems that a lot of people, who haven't known of me as a pianist, think I've just started off as a comedian. And so for them the piano was something extra. But, of course, playing the piano was something that came before all of what's happened now.

When I was going through those very fast changes, I think it was terribly important to me that I was seen to be inventive. I think that was the characteristic of my work that I wanted people to see.

I find that when people get a script, they know within five pages if the writer can write. Once you're five pages in, it doesn't matter whose name is on the cover, you're not even thinking about it.

People are always asking me to sign my old canvases. It's ridiculous!

I wish I could be more serious about painting. I think there may be something going on there and I should pursue it. I'm very old-fashioned - even with the music. I realize, while I have so much respect for the kookiness of people who go for it, who paint with their eyes closed, I am superclassical.

Singing other people's material was perceived, I think, as a weakness of my persona. The effect, though, was to make me dig my heels in and try even harder to combine the two.

I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I'd rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas.

If someone thinks I'm a dickhead, fine, listen to someone else's record, then. We're not a totalitarian regime; no one's forced to listen to Coldplay. It's actually quite a compliment if you're something that people can stand against.

I'm going to make music that reflects me and my life now. So I think people who like my music and who listen to me should appreciate change as well, because I've definitely evolved, and that's a great thing, to celebrate that is what music is all about.

I don't think I'm good, I don't think I'm a good rapper. I think a lot of people always want me to battle somebody and stuff like that which is cool, but I don't see myself as a rapper.

I often think people don't know what to think of me, and in fact this is precisely the objective of many of my creations. Even back in the days with Lady Starlight, my original partner, we aimed to bemuse. This feeling of bemusement - it's neither good nor bad. It just is. Whether critics realize it or not, they've been in a very long argument since my public birth.

I know that the gift that God gave me isn't gonna just wither up and die unless I let it die, so it's a matter of me having the faith that it's gonna come out. Whether or not the public's gonna like it is another story. But I think as long as I keep changing and sticking to what I really love - and the same goes for Steven and the other guys in the band - then people are gonna like it.

I'd like to think...that people in pubs would talk about my poems

I try not to focus on what people say too much because there's nothing I can do about it. All I can do is focus on staying true to the style of music I write and sing because that is the only way it's going to come off as honest.

I think when people talk about improvising it turns into this silly thing like, "Oh there's like a hula hoop there and I'm like 'Oh what's going on here? Is this a really big ring?'"

I think a lot of people are very good, but I don't think anybody could do my rhythm. I was thinking, "If you want my rhythm" - and when I was writing, I was writing them for myself - "why am I watching another actor doing what I should be doing?" It was just a really unpleasant experience.

What was happening with me, with the album [A Period of Transition], with the people who took the pictures, the record company, everything, getting a new manager [Harvey Goldsmith]-it was all saying a period of transition to me so that was the title choice. It says what it is and obviously nobody is going to analyze that. It's exactly what it is.

Don't you think that's the main reason people find [writing] so difficult? If they can write complete sentences and can use a dictionary, isn't that the only reason they find writing hard: they don't know or care about anything?

Everything that creative people think and do is from the heart.

The landscape becomes human, becomes a thinking, living being within me. I become one with my picture...we merge in an iridescent chaos.

I think the stakes are always high when you're an artist of color - to get things right, to get things perfect and make everybody happy. But I'm not concerned with politicians and what they think. And I'm not always going to succeed. I'll have missteps, but I hope that people will be patient with the show and us and know that our intentions are good.

Some people flinch when you talk about art in the context of the needs of society thinking you are introducing something far too common for a discussion of art. Why should art have a purpose and a use? Art shouldn't be concerned with purpose and reason and need, they say. These are improper. But from the very beginning, it seems to me, stories have indeed been meant to be enjoyed, to appeal to that part of us which enjoys good form and good shape and good sound.