Sharon Van Etten Quotes

People used to say nobody can sing my songs but me - they're too personal.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

My songs are a direct route into my brain and my heart.

I include myself in the posters because I feel like it forms a more intimate relationship between the artist and the person passing by. And it's important to include some vulnerability and use fears and rejections and various aspects from my own life so people look at my work as more than greeting card fodder.

I need to let people know who I am and instead of just trying to make great records, just be honest and make it more personal and make it more passionate, to make records with emotion and not be afraid to express that.

The Smiths was an incredibly personal thing to me. It was like launching your own diary to music.

The songs are about things that we were thinking and we wrote 'em down, and when you listen to 'em, whatever you think it's about... THAT'S what it's about!

I won't get into it any more than to say that there are parts of me in all the songs that I write.

I really do pride myself on being able to help other people tell their stories and bring out the best in them. But I still, every song I'm writing, I still need to relate to it. I still need to find my true self in it, or else it'll feel dishonest. I mean, everything has a queer meaning as far as I'm concerned.

Hopefully when you listen to a song, you can say, 'That's me,' or 'That's someone I know' - you relate to it in a way that's cathartic.

The thing I love about music... you can close your eyes and be transported back to a memory or a dream or a feeling.

When there are no lyrics, people can picture what they want. It's a reflection of where they are in their lives. Music becomes a mirror.

I picked songs that I've been singing my whole life that stuck with me. I tried to pick stuff that was a variety. And I think the same way I always imagine that people are going to play the record at their house and I imagine them doing stuff with music on, like the way I am.

The lack of education means, the lack of having something I can pull out of a drawer, means I have to find something in any movie I work on that is intensely personal.

It's funny, people talk about the characters they play and who do you sort of see yourself as or which ones maybe were closest to you and in some ways.

These were choice documents to me... They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance.

I've never written for anybody else. For me, it was a challenge. I write for me. I don't write for anybody else. And what was good about it was that I was writing for somebody I knew. I knew what my mother thinks and how she feels. So it was finding that creative spirit to write about my mother.

In a portrait, you always leave part of yourself behind.

Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.

There's me in every character I put on the pages.

I really focus on what my fans will take from it, people living their day-to-day lives. At the end of the day, the music isn't for me; it's for people who are going through their struggles and want to relate to someone who feels the same way they do. I've got to go all-in, expressing myself, right there in the moment.

That's the crazy part about music, that you can just be someone and it means something.

The reason for my starting a diary is that I have no real friend.

I actually didn't want to have control of the writing on my first album. To write, you have to have time to connect with yourself. I don't have that time right now, because I'm so busy.

I have always felt that if I am very personal and connected with what I myself am living, my writing will transcend ecclesial boundaries.