Ashley Monroe Quotes

I try not to think too much about what the audience is thinking and what they think I should do.

I ended up becoming so self-conscious that my songs stopped being about my life and started being about what people thought of my music. And that was really bad.

If I make assumptions about the audience and start overthinking things, I can drive myself crazy about how the audience perceives me. I try not to do that anymore.

This weird thing that musicians have... it's got something to do with approval, and not feeling good enough, and therefore going out and being great somehow makes your life valid.

I am really a very shy person. If I appear, it is because of the music, not because I want to be seen.

I'd been shy since childhood, constantly full of self-doubt. And as an actor, I'd been so scared of failing that I made my career - and myself - a big joke.

The joy of songwriting only gets messed up if you are trying to follow up a big success, or you are trying to create a hit single, or if you have conscious thoughts of a particular outcome for the music.

I have the worst ear for criticism; even when I have created a stage set I like, I always hear the woman in the back of the dress circle who says she doesn't like blue.

If I spent my time worrying about what other people would think of my work, I would be too self-conscious to write.

If I stop to think about fans, or best-selling, or not best-selling, or good reviews, or not-good reviews, it just becomes too much. It's like staring at the mirror all day.

When you sit down and play your music for someone you respect, you get that feeling in your stomach of like: 'Oh my God...' You know if it's not great because you start to feel sick.

I hope I don't give music a bad name.

I was afraid of not living up to what people expected me to be.

It's way easier to write for other people. Yourself isn't in it. When you write for yourself, you overthink, and you become paranoid. When you write for others, it isn't about you.

When I began to choreograph and find my way pulling other artists' dreams out and changing music in a visual way, there was still a part of me that had something more to say. There was still a desire to rock a stage and ultimately perform the eight count of my dream, but there was a lot of insecurity there.

In theater and dance, I was trying to win someone's approval, trying to get in, trying to be good. It felt out of my control, whereas music suddenly felt like this free expression. It was fun.

Probably some of the projects I chose to do after that had more to do with what people thought of me. The industry was very open and probably hoping that I could do anything.

I worry a lot about what people think. I worry people think I'm not helping them enough, that they don't like my music, that I'm playing a song too fast or talking too fast. I worry my wife isn't happy with our relationship... I'm afraid somebody's going to take my career away from me. That it's going to go away, or I'm going to get fired.

I feel nervous when the script is set in stone, and I feel nervous when I feel the script is written for mass consumption because I don't see myself that way.

Deep down inside, I do feel, at times, that I have to prove to people that I'm actually an artist.

I sometimes self-edit when it comes to auditions and go, 'They're not going to cast me, so I'm not going to do it.'

I write good songs out of fear... fear of failure. Because if they're not good enough, you feel yourself starting to fall.

If you put too much pressure on the idea of people watching you, it stops you being able to watch people.

I think anytime you work on something, even if you feel really good about it, you're never really sure. Once it's in the public space, it's out of my hands.

I spent a great deal of my career willingly ignoring the fact that people are participating in it, because it allows me to function without second-guessing it, without thinking, 'Oh, I wonder what people are gonna think of this,' or, 'I wonder what people aren't gonna think of this.'