Joanna Newsom Quotes

I did spend a year in high school being obsessed with Fleetwood Mac.

I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilight No I was all horns and thorns sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright.

People in San Francisco and the East Bay have shown interest, done interviews, and have come to shows. I guess that the news travels fast out of this island that we are on.

It broke my heart when I learned the moon had been passing the sun’s light off as its own.

Never get so attached to a poem that you forget truth that lacks lyricism.

I would happy for someone to download my music.

Lyrics are very different. There is a clear line between that and a poem. Something that has been a source of great excitement and delight for me is this idea that I get to rhyme.

What a woman does is open doors. And it is not a question of locking or unlocking.

I am producing sounds that people are not used to hearing from the harp.

I wasn't interested in writing music that wasn't beautiful for me to listen to.

I wanted to write songs which I think is a different thing. I wanted to write music that is informed by folk music. The chord progressions are obvious references.

I started playing harp about fourteen years ago.

In high school, we studied a lot of poetical forms. I was really interested in the math that was involved and the strange live break ups. That gave me a great amount of respect for a rhymed stanza.

I can't play my songs on the smaller harp. I have a Celtic harp. I can't do the key changes.

You should listen to a lot of different music.

I give away CDs at shows if someone wants a CD but doesn't have any money. I wouldn't want to do that forever.

We deserve to know light. And grow evermore lighter and lighter.

I want to make music that somehow connects to the things that I love in America music.

If I ever met Dolly Parton for sure, I would just not be able to say anything. I love her.

I have a recording that I did of instrumental songs.

I am consciously trying not to make it sound Celtic or African.

I never thought people would be mortally offended by the sounds I was making.

The way that words fit together is always interesting to me. I love words.

People are often afraid for me. They think that I am going to break. I can make it through a set.

I played piano for about two years when I was a kid. I didn't play long enough to be really great.

I don't think I'm abnormal and I think that lets people down.

We are blessed and sustained by what is not said

There's something fundamental to the harp that has retained its appeal my whole life. It's an instrument I am just in love with.

I've been unaware of how people react to the instrument. People have ideas of what a harp is supposed to sound like, and a lot of them are negative ideas.

The so-called positive press has in some ways been more difficult to swallow than the negative.

I have writing songs on my own for about six years.

I am always trying to write.

I can understand someone not liking the voice or the songs.

I have a deep rooted folk sensibility that I can't get away from completely.

There are some mornings when the sky looks like a road.

I am not doing something that it is experimental music in relation to classical music.

I can bear a lot but not that pall

And a thimble's worth of milky moon Can touch hearts larger than a thimble.

I'm not a wanderer, which is funny because I'm on tour half the time. I'm a home, hearth and family kind of person.

And all that we built, and all that we breathed And all that we spilled or pulled up like weeds Is piled up in back and it burns irrevocably And we spoke up in turns 'til the silence crept over me.

In the sinking sand, where we’ve come to rest, have I had a hand in your loneliness?

I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilightNo I was all horns and thorns sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright.