110+ PJ Harvey Quotes On Music, Friendship And Dating

PJ Harvey is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. She is known for her distinctive voice and poetic lyrics, which often address personal and political themes. She has been nominated for nine Grammy Awards and has won the Mercury Prize twice. Following is our collection on famous quotes by PJ Harvey on love, life, music.

Top 10 PJ Harvey Quotes

1. I just love having no clothes on outside, and the only time to do that is when the sun's shining. It's a wonderful sensation to not have any clothes on.
2. Shame is the shadow of love.
3. I see men come and go, but there'll be one who'll collect my soul.
4. Ive always been very visceral in that I feel things very deeply.
5. I think of myself as a songwriter, a weaver of story and imagination in a way that a novelist might write a book.
6. Making me into a role model is placing too much importance on what I see as a work in progress.
7. People have this idea of me being some kind of monster, and that's the complete opposite of who I am.
8. I'm not an autobiographical writer, but I am a writer who deals with human emotion on all levels.
9. Fly with me, touch the face of the true God. And then cry with joy at the depth of my love.
10. I just started writing and writing for people. And then, like I guess after (a) year of getting some placements, I kinda got a shot to be an artist. Long story short I think, yeah.

PJ Harvey Short Quotes

• My town was even smaller. Only six hundred people. We didn't have a grocery store.
• I'm finding my way, and I make mistakes.
• I had a chip on my shoulders 'cause I felt like I was being overlooked.
• Never settle for anything less than you want.
• People want to build musicians into mythical beings.
• My mom is a sculptress.
• I've always been very interested in the visual aspect of what I do.
• It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent.
• I really don't pay too much attention; I don't go out of my way to read any interviews.
• I'm always writing, the past 10 years. A lot has changed, in that it's something I do every day.

PJ Harvey Quotes About Love

Ever since time began: What song is not about love? Whether it's about love from man to woman or parent to child, or grandmother to granddaughter... It just goes on and on. Or whether it's the love of one's country. — PJ Harvey

The artists that I love- whether painters or filmmakers- it's because something resonates in me because I've felt it. — PJ Harvey

I think I just speak on what the regular people are going through outside of love 'cause, of course, there's always gonna be a love song, but there's so many other parts of life... being lost, feeling your way around, what you gonna do next. — PJ Harvey

I tried to use words that were dealing with the emotional quality that any human being could recognize in the way that they felt about their country. It's to do with the world we live in. That world is a brutal one and full of war. It's also full of many wonderful things and love and hope — PJ Harvey

Love for money is my sin, any man calls, I'll let him in. — PJ Harvey

PJ Harvey Quotes About Life

People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up. — PJ Harvey

As far as in my adult life, it kinda started (with) writing first 'cause I went to school in Nashville. I mean, not Nashville but close to Nashville, and I met my managers in L.A. at a convention randomly. And then, it kinda just started from there. And then, I got my publishing deal. — PJ Harvey

There is a thread connecting you no matter how far away you are from someone and you know I have two or three relationships in my life that are like that. — PJ Harvey

The way I make music is unique to myself and the way I have lived my life - no one else would tell that story in the same way that I do. — PJ Harvey

Ideas for songs can come from something as simple as a photograph and letting my imagination run wild on an old photograph that I found, or to a film that I have seen or to just most of the time, just daily walking through life and keeping your eyes open. — PJ Harvey

I think that most art is asking a question or is looking for something, looking for answers and that is what life seems to be about for most people. — PJ Harvey

I have learnt through doing interviews throughout my life that the way that somebody can write about something can change entirely how it was meant, or what actually happened. — PJ Harvey

The craft, the writing of a song, is about creating a story, a life story, a world within three minutes, but that's the frame, if you like, the picture frame. That fascinates me. — PJ Harvey

In the same way, I write some of my more difficult pieces when I'm at very happy stages in my life. — PJ Harvey

Everything from a lifetime's worth of collecting things. You know as we go through life, and something stays and ends up on your shelf and lives there until you die? Just those little things. — PJ Harvey

PJ Harvey Quotes About Music

I didn't know folk music growing up, no. It's something I've come to study, really, because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication, the traveling storyteller, the bard, the minstrels. — PJ Harvey

I never feel that I have to adopt a character. It's more the way I choose to present the music and that's always based on what is right for the song. — PJ Harvey

If anything, I hope being an artist opens up more opportunities 'cause I feel there's a lot of things I could do, like musically and stylistic-wise that I can write, but I don't really have an avenue to show it 'cause most of the things I'm writing are in Hip Hop. — PJ Harvey

I was really influenced by a lot of Disney soundtracks, because that's what I used to watch all the time, and they always put music in it, which is why I tend to have popular melodies over harder beats. — PJ Harvey

I think I've been interested in music since I was little. — PJ Harvey

There's so much you can do with laying words on a bed of music. You can completely change their meaning with the type of music or the way they're sung. — PJ Harvey

I think blues music is music of the soul. Of course, there are other forms. You could call some classical music blues music in that way. — PJ Harvey

You shouldn't separate the piece from the way it's intended. I always feel like words shouldn't be unraveled from the music. They're all linked so much together. — PJ Harvey

Being a recording artist and having thousands of people listening to your music and singing your songs, and paying for it? It feels great! — PJ Harvey

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

PJ Harvey Famous Quotes And Sayings

You know if I see a work that really I am very affected by and inspired by then it makes me want to try things with my work that maybe I hadn't considered trying before and I think that is the biggest complement that you can pay somebody. — PJ Harvey

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. I've always been very affected by politics, society, but I never got to a place as a writer where I felt like I could begin to deal with such things and do it well. — PJ Harvey

The first song I heard from me was Meek Mill ["I Don't Know"], it was his first single before he went (to jail). I remember the first time I heard it was like eleven thirty at night, and I was like, "Yo, this is crazy!" And, I was smiling from ear to ear. — PJ Harvey

I feel like I make a soundtrack for the come up, and I feel like there's so many people that's trying to figure out how to chase their dreams, or that are in the process of chasing their dreams, so they connect with that. And then being a singer, you don't really get to touch on nothing either. — PJ Harvey

I think it does surprise me a bit when people have a very fixed idea of what I'm like, based upon the work that I do, which is something that is very separate. — PJ Harvey

I did photography, painting, and drawing, but I prefer sculpture. I like it because it's very physical. — PJ Harvey

Most of the stuff that I do talk about, about being counted out and being an underdog, 'cause that's what I feel like I am. — PJ Harvey

I find it hard myself to feel justified to sing in a very politically direct way about war or social conditions because I feel so ignorant of a lot of it. — PJ Harvey

I feel like when I'm writing for other people, when I'm doing rap hooks, it's kinda like playing dress up for me... — PJ Harvey

First off, I think nudity is taken differently in America, though they did make a fuss in England, too. — PJ Harvey

I am someone that follows the news and reads newspapers yet what do you believe and what don't you. — PJ Harvey

You know, two people can say exactly the same words, saying the same story, and it would mean something entirely different. — PJ Harvey

You go back and look at some of the ancient writings that exist throughout the world about wars and it's the same; the human beings' articulation of events is the same. That really fascinated me. — PJ Harvey

I firmly disbelieve that one has to be a tortured soul to write good music. — PJ Harvey

People have a tendency to see country life through rose-colored glasses. — PJ Harvey

If you come at the record feeling really happy and optimistic, it can be incredibly beautiful and uplifting, and if you come at it in a bleak moment, it can feel like a very dark place to share. It's all down to the listener. — PJ Harvey

I'm always trying to swim to new ground. — PJ Harvey

When I was young, I had idols that I thought were wonderful. I wanted to be just like them. — PJ Harvey

Well, I don't really concern myself too much with what other people make of my work. — PJ Harvey

Obviously, the emotions I want to convey through music are streamed through the way I interpret life. — PJ Harvey

Well, I'm quite a self-deprecating person. — PJ Harvey

In the past members of my family on both my mother's and father's side have fought in the war, in the first and second World Wars. Unfortunately, they're dead and I wasn't able to speak to them, but that was in our family history too. — PJ Harvey

[I] try to do both because the writing for me, to be a new artist, the writing is gonna pay the bills. — PJ Harvey

It's so interesting to me how songs take on a shape and body of their own and grow. — PJ Harvey

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

I don't hold onto anything, because it's a waste of energy to do so, really. There's nothing that I can do about the way people want to write about me. I just try and concentrate on my work and do that as well as I can. — PJ Harvey

What Rare [albom] allows me to do is gonna show people other things that I'm capable of 'cause they really haven't heard a lot of things outside of the rap stuff that I do. — PJ Harvey

I think a lot of people have an idealistic view - if you grow up in the country, there can't possibly be anything wrong with you. — PJ Harvey

Yeah, I mean I am somebody that makes an effort to go and see a lot of exhibitions, painting, drawing, sculpture. — PJ Harvey

I'm finding that writing poetry is strengthening my songwriting, because you're learning to make a piece of writing work on a page with nothing else. I was also finding within poetry I felt a lot more free to write about very different matters, to write about social issues or things that are going on around me. — PJ Harvey

I'm a visual artist myself and always have been so it's very natural for me to be very concerned with presentation, whether it's artwork or onstage. — PJ Harvey

I feel that my dreamscapes are part of my everyday life, and sometimes I can't tell the difference. — PJ Harvey

It [ "Not For Long"] was the biggest song that I've had, and I actually heard it on the radio multiple times. — PJ Harvey

There is nothing more boring than doing singing exercises. — PJ Harvey

What we are fed through the media I do not accept, unless you see it with your own eyes you cant trust anything. — PJ Harvey

There's a level of discipline I use as a writer, designed to get better at what I'm doing, that requires quite a lot of study and quite a lot of hard work as well. — PJ Harvey

Some things lend themselves well to songs, some things don't, and I'm learning that a lot at the moment. It's still a relatively new way of writing. It's only really the last five to 10 years that I've taken my writing seriously in this way, as something I can keep working toward. I think I feel myself much more before as simply a songwriter. — PJ Harvey

At this point in my life, I'm probably not gonna be able to stop writing because it's gonna help me be able to do what I need to do. — PJ Harvey

I think Ive got a pretty good sense of humor. — PJ Harvey

We just kind of lost our way. But we were looking to be free. One day we'll float. Take life as it comes. — PJ Harvey

Maybe you're a singer or not, but what taps into the soul leads to the heart, and that's really what I came away with, with the starting point for the record being that I could speak as a human being and feel things very deeply. — PJ Harvey

Before I record for real, I know pretty much exactly how I want them to feel. — PJ Harvey

In college, I thought I wanted to be solely an artist, and then when I got here, to college, I was like, "Okay, well I want to be a songwriter," 'cause it was like close to Nashville. — PJ Harvey

I like things that are beaten up, that have lived a little. I like things that are real. I like things that are made out of wood or string. I never feel very responsive to plastic machinery. — PJ Harvey

I would never feel confident enough to express my views and opinions as the right ones because I just don't think that's possible. There are so many sides to everything that nobody is right or wrong. — PJ Harvey

I studied art just short of the level where you can earn a degree. — PJ Harvey

I feel like "Not For Long" was one for me just because I got to work with two people that I looked up to... — PJ Harvey

With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song. — PJ Harvey

I've always been very politically interested from a very young age and I hadn't felt that was something I could begin to bring into my songwriting because I hadn't felt I'd reached the stage, that I had the skill with language enough, yet, to do that. — PJ Harvey

I grab an instrument to make my body a song, but I'm not a player as such, maybe a little more on guitar, but certainly not piano. — PJ Harvey

My father is actually a quarry man - he deals in stone. He also at one point had a lot of sheep, he owned a sheep farm, but primarily the family business was in stone. — PJ Harvey

I also like a lot of silence, and when you're touring, it's constantly noise, all the time, you're surrounded with 15 or 20 people the entire time. I find that tough. — PJ Harvey

I've been so used to being supported by musicians, and I don't class myself as a particularly adept musician on instruments. I think I'm a songwriter. — PJ Harvey

I'm doing quite a lot of painting on stones - little funny fish and animals. — PJ Harvey

I'm a very private person, so obviously I don't enjoy talking about more personal matters. But at the same time I care very much about my work and I would like people to know that it exists. So I appreciate that there's a meeting point, where I would like people to know about the work that I'm doing, and that requires me to talk about it. — PJ Harvey

I long ago learned that you can't expect people to interpret the songs in the way they had meant for you, as the writer. — PJ Harvey

Like I have to pretend like I'm a male rapper, that I got stacks and we're in the club, and what do I want to say. And then, when writing Rare I could just be PJ. — PJ Harvey

I would listen most particularly to the countries whose language I didn't understand, didn't know what they were singing. But being a singer myself, I could understand because of the emotion. — PJ Harvey

But huge photographs of dead bodies are slightly different. I couldn't find much humor there. — PJ Harvey

I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. I have to work really hard at it to try and say the things I'm concerned with. — PJ Harvey

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. — PJ Harvey

I don't think that much anymore in terms of 'write a record, record a record, tour a record,' because in my own mind, things have changed, in that I'm just an ongoing artist. I'm not quite sure what the next project needs to be until it presents himself, and then I know. I just follow dutifully while I'm being led. — PJ Harvey

I do take enormous interest in what's going on. I try to see whatever I can, whenever I can. — PJ Harvey

I think you have to be very careful getting the balance right if you're going to talk about grand themes like war, death and nationhood. You need to use the right language or don't do it at all. — PJ Harvey

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. — PJ Harvey

When I write - I always write on my own - I demo those songs on a four-track. — PJ Harvey

I feel like it's very important that I'm doing what I'm doing, and I want to keep honoring that and try and do it as honestly as I can. — PJ Harvey

And all of these writers offer me a greater understanding of what it is to be alive, and that is such an incredible thing art can do for other people. It made me want to try and get close to this strange, mysterious thing that people can do with words. — PJ Harvey

When I'm writing for rappers it's kinda like switching, "Okay, you're not PJ. Now you have to act like a rapper." — PJ Harvey

Life Lessons by PJ Harvey

1. PJ Harvey's work is a reminder to always be creative and take risks with your art, as she has consistently pushed the boundaries of her sound and style throughout her career.
2. Her willingness to experiment and explore different genres has allowed her to create music that is both unique and timeless.
3. PJ Harvey's work serves as an example of how to remain true to yourself and your vision, no matter what the industry or critics may say.