Julia Holter

“I was pretty scared of the idea as a younger person of being a musician on the road. It didn't occur to me as a possibility.”

“I don't think I'll ever become a pop star.”

“I don't often meet with strangers and feel okay about collaborating with them.”

“If I feel like I'm myself, then I'm very uncomfortable.”

“I don't thrive in a school or academic environment, I found out. I thrive better in the world outside the small academy because I find it hard to explain what I'm doing.”

“I really love working with Ramona from Nite Jewel. We've kind of grown up together.”

“I don't use the harpsichord because it evokes a past time period: I use it because I like the sound.”

“I started writing music as a composer in school, in the classical tradition.”

“One thing I've learned is I really want to work with people.”

“I basically just write stream of consciousness to a certain extent. I let the song kind of go where it wants to go.”

“I've never felt at home anywhere.”

“Amidst all the internal and external babble we experience daily, it's hard to find one's foundation.”

“It's so hard to know where you belong, ever. You have to be yourself and let yourself fall wherever you fall.”

“I started playing piano when I was eight, and I went on to study piano in school, so I have a background in classical piano and studied composition in school. Writing music came later.”

“I think my music is experimental, playful, challenging, focused, fun. I don't want it to be thought of as trying to appeal to a certain type of person or being very cerebral.”

“I thought I was gonna get a doctorate in composition or be a composer and be at a university for the rest of my life, mostly because my parents are academics, and that was the logical thing to do.”

“I grew up watching 'Gigi.' My grandmother had it, and I watched it there.”

“There's a lot psychologically going on in boxing... I think I relate to some of it. I have a respect for it. It's like performing, but it's also this crazy, self-destructive thing.”

“What was special about Leonard Cohen's work was its calm mystery.”

“You don't have to know about 'Hippolytus' to listen to 'Tragedy.'”