Musician Quotes

You feel the music needs something but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that's frustrating, especially if you don't come up with something for three days.

We're thinking about printing the lyrics with the next record so that people can find their own meaning in them. But then they would start having a life of their own, and I think the Portishead music should stay a whole in which the lyrics come second, actually.

There's not only emotion in the way you sing but also in what you sing. That way I can compensate it.

The music comes first. When Geoff has made something the inspiration comes automatically. His music is very expressive. But still is is a very difficult process: I have to add something to his music, not push it away. It has to be equal, and I find that very difficult.

Most of the lyrics are over a year old, and it doesn't feel like it's about me. Time created a distance.

Let's get one thing straight: there's no such thing as the Bristol sound.

I've just put my heart and soul in a song and need at least a week to recover.

I've had a wordless phase, and that's still not entirely over: what I sing is not always literally meant that way, and you can hear that in the way it is sung.

I thought I had a clear picture of death, but now I know it's a mystery and it will always be a mystery, although it is something we all have in common: everybody knows that life ends with death.

I think that after a year of Portishead I've become a little more sober.

I still don't like doing interviews. I hardly do any... I hope this will be the last one for a long while.

I am a very sensitive person, very impulsive and emotional.

I try to imagine how we would live if we didn't know we were going to die. Would we live our lives differently? Less careful, maybe? Less scared? These are beautiful things to think about and build a song around.

When we moved to Seattle, everybody kind of disappeared into different corners of the city and it was a very difficult time for the band.

What we aspired to in 1998, we have wildly surpassed. And I know we all feel incredibly grateful and lucky this band has been able to have the life that it's had.

We never sit down before we start making a record and talk about this new sonic palette that we are going to try to explore. We always let the record kind of reveal itself to us over time.

To set the record straight for the God knows millionth time, we certainly didn't sign to Atlantic just for the money.

The songwriting of Hall & Oates is deceptively complex. There are a number of key changes that pass you by as you're listening to the song because they're so seamless and clever.

The second 'Postal Service' album is threatening to become the 'Chinese Democracy' of indie rock. It will come out eventually, or maybe it won't.

It's trippy to think we have an album that's 10 years old. It's even trippier to think we have a couple of albums older than that.

It's like, how do you continue to make records that are representative of who you are that your fans will recognize as your band, while still trying to push things forward and present new sounds for people.

I've covered Avril Lavigne. I like good pop songs, and I don't think there should be any kind of preconceptions about where good pop songs come from.

I've always had a soft spot for Phil Collins. He's a great vocalist.

I'm not like a 90-mph fastball kind of guy, but I can hit 70 on radar gun. I hit 70 one time on a radar guy at one of those pitch-and-throw kind of things. I have a pretty good arm for somebody who's not a baseball player.

I was literally just going and applying for jobs, and I couldn't get a job, and I was getting more and more broke, and you find yourself groveling for jobs you don't even want.

I love bummer songs.

I like writing on piano and a computer, and a lot of 'Plans' came out of samples and vocal lines.

I just rediscovered my guitar.

I feel that we are currently living in a world that is similar to late '50s, early '60s kind of world.

I don't want to be overdramatic about it, but I'm starting to see a lot of my bad habits get the best of me.