Amanda Shires

“It helped my lyric writing so much studying poetry. I thought I knew what poetry was before I immersed myself in it. Poetry is meditative. It's reflective.”

“When you name a beast, sometimes it makes it less bestial.”

“In the past, I was free to write in quiet and in the space wherever my desk was at. I could leave my instruments out. In the past, my writing was super private; I never liked showing my work at its earliest stages.”

“It's weird to take your work into a room and everybody reads it. Then comes the terror part, the dissection.”

“I was leaving my violin out of a lot of songs, and that's a strange thing to do because I've been playing the violin since I was 2. It's a part of me. Adding pedals and sounds is great because I get to play the instrument I feel most comfortable on and the one I feel gives my truest expression when I'm making a solo or anything like that.”