P. J. Harvey

“I'd want to read the stories that I'd written, I'd want to show the drawings that I made. That was just purely natural. So I knew I wanted to go into the arts in some way and that I'd want to show that work in some way.”

“I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do, then I'm myself, and if I don't, then I give nothing.”

“I've always felt that I'm affected by the world, by the way we treat each other, by the way different countries treat each other.”

“In order to make my solo shows as interesting as possible, I moved songs onto very different instruments so that I was moving instruments quite a lot during the set.”

“I'm probably much more influenced by film-makers and painters than I am by other songwriters or poets.”

“I think that's always very valuable: to keep the mind open to receiving all sorts of information, which can then be used in my work, but also just as a human being.”

“I've always been very visceral in that I feel things very deeply.”

“I'm a very private person, so obviously I don't enjoy talking about more personal matters.”

“I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing, and I don't ever feel like I'm working in a cycle in that respect, because it's every day anyway, no matter what I'm doing. Then I get to a point when I've collected together enough words that seem like they want to be songs rather than poems, or sometimes not.”

“There is nothing more boring than doing singing exercises.”

“It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent. Therefore I keep reaching for instruments I don't particularly know how to play, and then I become excited.”

“I don't loathe interviews, I'm just one of those people who makes music because I find it difficult to talk.”

“I was a visual artist primarily and a writer, even from a very young age.”

“I'm not an autobiographical writer, but I am a writer who deals with human emotion on all levels.”

“Maybe I'm just purely lucky. If I've come up against obstacles I've always found another way around it.”

“I'm a Libra. That means that I can make a decision, but only after much thought.”

“My mom is a sculptress.”