Sharon Van Etten Quotes

A lot of songs are derivative of each other. Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that's slightly different in order to get inspiration.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

I don't know what makes a guy want to write songs and sing, but if you've got a message, you want to get it across. When I come up with an idea about the way I feel, I can really state it strongly in a song.

Nothing pleases me more than to go into a room and come out with a piece of music.

I can't see myself just endlessly singing the same songs over and over again.

I just start playing music and eventually I sing something, a line of a verse or a B section or a line of a chorus, and the line that I end up singing is related to the music I'm playing, if that makes any sense. And I go from there.

I just play, and I'm always trying to write songs.

After ten or twelve years you can only play something so long and then you start to parody it.

The problem as you get older is, from my perspective, after a certain amount of songs, you tend to start writing something and then you stop and say, 'Wait, I think I've written that before.'

I wrote music. I was in a hardcore band when I was 14, and I wasn't good enough to play anyone else's songs, so I had to write my own.

I think the best riffs and the best songs come when you're jamming and having a good time.

I found it was really impossible for me to write songs when I couldn't sing.

I'm just writing less of my own music lately - I go in and out of phases a lot. Sometimes there are these accidents that just sort of happen, that are kind of waiting around the corner. I guess Modest Mouse was one of them.

You can't help but have ideas when you're inspired musically.

As a songwriter, you try your best to write a good song, and you like nothing better than hearing a good song. It's easy to admire a great song, and you want to share out of enthusiasm.

I love working and writing new songs. But sometimes you need to wait, to have something in your mind, and then you can let yourself play music.

I still picture myself as a student of the music. I'm always trying to learn new things. Music is just what makes me tick.

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.

I had no aspirations to be a musician, but I picked up a guitar for two seconds and haven't put it down since.

I didn't write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn't.

I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.

My songwriting process, and maybe loads of other people's, is just this sort of smashing together of emotions and stuff to make some music. It's kind of simple and really complex at the same time and, as you can see, incredibly hard to explain.

Remember, if you do the same act for 20, 30 years it gets a little boring unless you've got something else going for you... And the orchestra really kept you going. They'd laugh at all your jokes, even if they'd been hearing them for the last 30 years.

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

I'm by no means a pianist. I think that's safe to say, but the piano, for me, I would say it's the enabler. It gave me what I needed and gives me what I need in order to write a song. And I think playing or improvising on the piano is where I feel most liberated and sort of less conscious of all my insecurities or inadequacies.