Amanda Palmer

“Twitter fascinates me because it's real. It feels kind of unreal, but it makes very real things happen.”

“Bands like Nirvana had theatrical sensibilities, playing with image, challenging assumptions people were making about them, the apex being Kurt Cobain in a dress to make a point.”

“When we ask for anything, we're almost always asking for help, in some form; help with money, permission, acceptance, advancement, help with our hearts...Brene Brown has found through her research that women tend to feel shame around the idea of being 'never enough'... at home, at work, in bed, never pretty enough, never smart enough, never thin enough, never good enough...Men tend to feel shame around the fear of being perceived as weak, or more academically, 'fear of being called a pussy'. Both sexes get trapped in the same box for different reasons. If I ask for help...I am not enough.If I ask for help... I'm weak.It's no wonder so many of us don't bother to ask, it's too painful.”

“I don't feel at home in New Orleans. I don't feel at home in Austin or L.A. And I just felt immediately at home in northern Australia.”

“I hate being ignored.”

“People had this idea about becoming rock stars packing stadiums instead of having the goal of becoming what musicians used to be in terms of how they would perform and connect people.”

“I draw the line at letting people into my songwriting cave. To me, that's where the alchemy happens and where the mystery is.”

“There's a huge cloud of shame around art and business being seen as bedfellows.”

“I've been in a recording studio enough times to know that it is not the best place to multitask. Doing a couple of takes of a song and running out to check your email to talk to someone about video production really is not good.”

“I think I've been addicted to openness since long before my rock career. I was terrible as a teenager. I used to go out of my way to make people uncomfortable with personal details. I was always fascinated by the idea that we have these weird, random boundaries between what we do and don't show.”

“I was just a very dark kid. My family was complicated.”

“One of the best things about Kickstarter and crowdfunding and the collapse of the music business is a lot of artists like me have been forced to face our own weird mess about ourselves and what we thought it meant to become musicians.”

“I see everybody arguing about what the value of music should be instead of what I think the bigger conversation is, which is that music has value, it's subjective and we're moving to a new era where the audience is taking more responsibility for supporting artists at whatever level.”

“If you want the world to pay for projects, you have to be able to display why you're worthy.”

“If you stuck me in a room and gave me art-making tools but told me no one would ever see the results, I don't think I'd have much desire to make art. What I do comes from a deep desire to be seen and to see others.”

“The stage show is, in some sense, highly theatrical. It's definitely not just a band in jeans playing rock and roll.”

“I have never in my career embarked on a journey towards controversy. I have never deliberately set a flame.”

“In some way, my fundamental feeling about music is that it's impossible to put a price tag on it. Human beings made music before they made a lot of other things, including tools.”

“I had very literal parents and I wanted to survive with metaphor and art, and there was a real sense of shame around it.”

“Crowdfunding as an idea itself isn't new - bands have been doing it since the dawn of time.”