Lorde

“If your dreams don't scare you, they are not big enough.”

“My advice to young people wanting to make music and to be in this industry is to really spend your time making music. Make so much music you have no friends. Make music. Figure out what it is you love, and... because if you're making cool art, then everything else will fall into line.”

“We all have Tumblr, and we all have Instagram and everything. People care so much about it because, now, any random can be famous on the Internet if their world looks good on Tumblr. And so everyone at high school strives for this kind of aesthetic correctness.”

“Don’t be afraid. Be the kind of person your mother warned you about.”

“I don't think people look at how pop stars live and feel anything aspirational at all.”

“Coming from New Zealand, all the music I listen to is not made by New Zealanders. People never come to New Zealand to play a show because it's in the middle of nowhere.”

“We've both got a million bad habits to kick, not sleeping is one. We're biting our nails, you're biting my lip, I'm biting my tongue.”

“I'm surrounded by the beach, so I love to fish and to dive and to swim. I walk a lot, and I bike around. I hang out at the beach, really, and muck around.”

“I read a lot of short fiction, like Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Carver and Wells Tower.”

“I love Top 40 pop, don't get me wrong; I just don't think that there's anyone in Top 40 pop that's 'real.'”

“I come from a big, loud family, and I'm the quieter one. Performing is something I have to switch on. I've heard I get real sassy onstage, which I'm not in real life! It's fun to be that person for an hour a night.”

“I'm speaking for a bunch of girls when I say that the idea that feminism is completely natural and shouldn't even be something that people find mildly surprising, it's just a part of being a girl in 2013.”

“I'm very conscious of people having pretty short attention spans: I know, I'm guilty of it. I'm 17 now: what happens by the time I'm 21, am I a burn-out or something? Will they still listen to my record?”

“I am really into how words sound out loud, so I was always the kid who would, like, read the page of the book to herself in her room over and over and over. And Raymond Carver is great for that. Tobias Wolff is an author who is really good for that as well.”

“You're the only friend I need Sharing beds like little kids And laughing 'til our ribs get tough But that will never be enough You're the only friend I need Sharing beds like little kids And laughing 'til our ribs get tough But that will never be enough”

“I'm really interested in kind of weird social situations and cliques, watching girls vying for attention, watching how the popularity thing happens. I've always thought too hard about everything.”

“Musicians like James Blake were a big influence on me. How he uses his vocals is amazing. And then Yeasayer and Animal Collective, who aren't pop bands exactly, but they do something that is so catchy and undeniable and so much fun.”

“We might be hollow, but we're brave”

“My dad is a civil engineer, and my mom is a stay-at-home mom. The fact that my parents weren't really involved in music was kind of good, because it meant that I had something that was private and personal.”

“Obviously I've had this fascination with aristocracy my whole life. Like, the kings and queens of 500 years ago... they're like rock stars. If there was a 'TMZ' 500 years ago, it would be about, like, Henry VIII and Marie Antoinette and all those people.”