Amanda Palmer Quotations

The world needs actual excitement and emotion more than it needs cool people.

I think performance art comes from a simple place of wanting to express things beyond just sound.

If you want the world to pay for projects, you have to be able to display why you're worthy.

Crowdfunding as an idea itself isn't new - bands have been doing it since the dawn of time.

Neil Gaiman swooped into my life though another friend, Jason Webley, who knew we were fans of each other's work and introduced us via email. Neil and I, like me and Ben, just hit it off instantly.

I see everybody arguing about what the value of music should be instead of what I think the bigger conversation is, which is that music has value, it's subjective and we're moving to a new era where the audience is taking more responsibility for supporting artists at whatever level.

The challenge in my life really is keeping the balance between feeling creatively energized and fulfilled without feeling overwhelmed and like Im in the middle of a battlefield.

Meditation, especially for people who don't know very much about it and think it's this very hippy dippy thing, can really be powerful, terrifying even, as it lifts the rug up on your subconscious and the dust comes flying out.

I've always been a creative workaholic. I have never had a period of my life where I didn't have at least half a dozen projects going on at once.

I think one of the greatest gifts you can give to someone is just access to the possibility of freedom that you don't have to be totally depressed and enslaved by your own environment.

There's a huge cloud of shame around art and business being seen as bedfellows.

I think I've been addicted to openness since long before my rock career. I was terrible as a teenager. I used to go out of my way to make people uncomfortable with personal details. I was always fascinated by the idea that we have these weird, random boundaries between what we do and don't show.

I draw the line at letting people into my songwriting cave. To me, that's where the alchemy happens and where the mystery is.

The stage show is, in some sense, highly theatrical. It's definitely not just a band in jeans playing rock and roll.

Twitter fascinates me because it's real. It feels kind of unreal, but it makes very real things happen.

People had this idea about becoming rock stars packing stadiums instead of having the goal of becoming what musicians used to be in terms of how they would perform and connect people.

I have never in my career embarked on a journey towards controversy. I have never deliberately set a flame.

If you're willing to take risks, Twitter is a vast amusement park of interesting life possibilities.

I have used Twitter for so many things, from places to stay, places to go, things to do, things I need, medical advice, you name it. Especially when I'm on tour, it really feels like I'm being taken care of by half a million people. It is like having a mom.

One of the best things about Kickstarter and crowdfunding and the collapse of the music business is a lot of artists like me have been forced to face our own weird mess about ourselves and what we thought it meant to become musicians.

There's no blueprint; getting married doesn't make you boring, having kids doesn't make you boring, having money doesn't necessarily have to make you boring.

In some way, my fundamental feeling about music is that it's impossible to put a price tag on it. Human beings made music before they made a lot of other things, including tools.

There's something advantageous about being a woman in rock versus, say, a woman in chemistry or construction. There's definitely a built-in sexism across the board, but I think you're afforded a degree of freedom in rock because, historically, the rules have been flexible.

My number-one goal is to never feel like I'm strictly defining myself. The minute I feel like I'm doing that as anything - as theatrical, as feminist, as songwriter - I feel like the minute I name it, I'm stuck in a box.

I had very literal parents and I wanted to survive with metaphor and art, and there was a real sense of shame around it.

I think to say that meditation is helpful to artists is true and it's great, but it's also essentially helpful to any kind of process of, just, life.

I'd actually say that every musician is a human being, and that not everybody likes being social. But with music, there are all these ingredients to the business that have nothing to do with writing songs or playing an instrument.

I've been in a recording studio enough times to know that it is not the best place to multitask. Doing a couple of takes of a song and running out to check your email to talk to someone about video production really is not good.

If you stuck me in a room and gave me art-making tools but told me no one would ever see the results, I don't think I'd have much desire to make art. What I do comes from a deep desire to be seen and to see others.

Every album is just a greatest hits of whatever songs are on a pile when I go in to make a record.

I get so many ideas for songs, but I'm so seldom disciplined enough to sit down and crank them out.

I suppose I'm happy to sell my time and energy, but I'm not happy to sell my initial creative time.

You get the feeling that on a lot of days the audience for most music would kind of rather not be faced with the artist, especially because we've been educated to think that the artist are these special creatures are otherwordly and aren't like us.

I was just a very dark kid. My family was complicated.

I'm a massive fan of David Lynch and 'Twin Peaks.'

Bands like Nirvana had theatrical sensibilities, playing with image, challenging assumptions people were making about them, the apex being Kurt Cobain in a dress to make a point.

This was not an easy decision and we're sorry for the late notice. Once we finish up the recordings of record number two the full Dresden Dolls experience will be back out on the road.

Sean and Paul have been following the band's growth for the past two years and have a real understanding of what we're trying to capture. The record is going to be fast and furious, immediate and raw.

I don't feel at home in New Orleans. I don't feel at home in Austin or L.A. And I just felt immediately at home in northern Australia.

I feel pretty good. Three meets in a week is alot.

The key is to just focus on the spots where the love is real, because you can just drive yourself crazy focusing on the negativity, focusing on the relationships that are irreparable and just aren't going to work, trying to convince the haters that you are indeed lovable. So much of that is wasted energy.

All of my music, my stage show, my personality, my blog, my twitter feed, anything that's made me me, and a huge part of why people like and respect me, is that I just don't spend much energy on that other stuff. It's not worth it. It's a losing battle too. You're just screwed the minute you engage.

Men find powerful women so threatening, and finding a partner was starting to look laughable, because I would be really attracted to guys and they would just be so threatened and I didn't like feeling threatening, I didn't want to feel threatened, I didn't want to feel like I was towering over anybody.

I wanted to feel like I could extend someone else's joy and not crush it, and that is the giant paradox nowadays of being a powerful woman: you want to live in a space of compassion and helpfulness and joy and expression, and the world is standing there, pointing the finger at you and telling you that you're greedy and domineering and attention-grabbing, and all you can do is shrug and just say, "Hopefully, someone out there understands and isn't misinterpreting."

The minute I spend any energy defending myself, explaining myself, or in the worst case scenario, trying to please those who are criticizing me, I will, you know, just fall off a cliff.

The challenge is to just focus on what's actually happening, focus on the people who get it, and focus on the people who are listening.

What I have found is, so much of that is like a Chinese finger trap: the more you play to the dark, the more you will get trapped in the dark, and if you just play to the light and focus on the people that don't misunderstand you and focus on the audience that does celebrate you and focus on the people who aren't trying to tear you down, all that other stuff eventually erases itself because it has nothing to feed on.

We are human and our nature is to air.

Our nature is to desperately want to believe and to take what we believe is the quickest path there even against our better judgment.

Everyone I know shares toothbrushes. Everyone I know sleeps on each other's floor. Everyone I know uses what they've got and shares what they've got.

I get really fantastic results when I just get out of my own way.

There are so many people, so many artists, so many magazines, so many theater companies, so many people trying to raise money for so many things that it's easy to look around and just feel powerless or helpless, because even if you have some resources, you can't help everybody.

There was a dance that everyone was doing that was heavily skewed with the power in one direction, but the dance was basically working, and then the dance got really disrupted with the first wave of feminism, and nobody found their footing yet - not the guys, not the women.

While we're over here blocked up in our departments and locked up in our own judgments and dealing with our own crazy problems, they're over there dealing with equivalent problems. One of the things that I am so frightened by lately is that men are having just as difficult a time striking a balance as we are.

I think you can't have this discussion and you can't have a discussion about feminism and the consciousness of the world without having a discussion about what has happened to men lately. They're holding the other side of the bag.

If you're going to make work and you're going to write and you're going to put yourself out there and perform, you will be belittled, you will be insulted, you will be called a standard collection of names, you will be accused, and you just have to stand there and continue to work and find a way to not let those things poison you.

I think it's so important to have a practice, because the consciousness isn't perfection or enlightenment or any of that bullshit. The consciousness is, "Oh, I'm walking down the street and I'm doing nothing."

One thing about being a performer is you're not just doing an intellectual job behind a desk; you're out there performing and being looked at, being assessed for really superficial stuff.

I never wanted to grow a thicker skin; I felt a real sense of pride in my thin skin, and in a weird way, I still do, because it's my thin skin that allows me to empathize with other people. It's the thing that allows me to create vulnerable art. It's the thing that allows me to create other feelings and make songs that actually grab people and touch people. I feel like I've spent my life fighting that thicker skin because I don't want to become an embittered asshole.

You're not going to be perfect, you're not going to stop berating yourself, you're not going to stop the comparisons, you're not going to stop the judgment, but you can become evermore mindful of it, and that has to be good enough.

I have a handful of really close relationships in my life and I depend on those people heavily to carry me through and to help me stay steady.

I had a real come-to-Jesus a couple of years ago when I started to see the direct line between feminism and everything else - feminism and climate change, feminism and poverty, feminism and hunger - and it was almost like I was born again and started walking down the street and was like, "Oh, my God, there are women everywhere! They're just everywhere you look. There's women all over the place!"

There's a fundamental disconnection in society in the way we live, this way we live that we take so for granted, and we've become very separate from one another and we don't really take lot of time to realize that. And the math is overwhelming to the point of despair, but the answers could be so simple.

If we can repair things emotionally, a lot of other things would follow.

On many days, harder than the act of making the art itself is the act of sharing it and living in a culture that you know is built to tear you down.

It's fine for people to say, "If you can't stand the heat and if you can't stand the criticism, then just don't use the Internet"; unfortunately, that is not an option. The Internet is where we make our living and where we make our work, especially if we're independents and we cannot afford to not engage, because that's where our business is driving from. It's just not an option.

Comparing yourself to the people like you, comparing yourself to the people who aren't like you, looking at how many records you've sold, looking at the venue size you're selling out. None of that can even remotely measure how happy you are.

I kind of rely on my artist friends to make my physical music worth buying by having them all come together and create beautiful artwork that everyone is gonna want to own to support my record.

If I simply do what I've always done, it's never failed me.

You know, there are so many snarky angry critics out there who are just sort of looking to tear down whoever is getting talked about.

There's a part of me that is really, really happy with all of my success lately because of what it can get me and what it can buy me in the fact that my music will hopefully reach more people. But it also makes me a little bit miserable because the minute the spotlight is on you, people start flinging sh*t at you for whatever reason.

I feel like I've gotten to the point in my career and in my life where I can allow myself to write whatever comes into my head and not judge it too harshly.

I feel like if I were to play the game completely and just get myself in a giant bottle of nail polish and put myself on display, I would feel like I had somehow cosmically lost. I feel like I'm taking a bunch of the ingredients and using some of them but not all of them and shuffling around and making people think I'm doing my job.

It feels like it is a daily work and an ongoing task to undo all of the f - - g programming that I have had all my life about who I am supposed to be and how I'm supposed to look and that I'm supposed to win. It's a daily deconstruction of all that bullshit.

When you really look back and take the wider perspective, it makes total sense that if the status quo is to remain the way it is, women will not be lauded and applauded for bonding with and helping each other, because it would destroy the world order if women organized; it would topple the whole thing. And so, it makes perfect sense to me that the current order of things would encourage the cat fights and encourage the comparisons and encourage the girl-on-girl hate that you see just being promoted everywhere.

It is terrifying to people when women step up and start owning the story that they have not owned. And I'm seeing so much of this, and it is a seismic shift.

There's nothing more threatening than a powerful woman, and there's nothing more threatening to the current order of things than women powerfully owning their own narrative. It's so threatening to people, to women as well, and it's threatening the order of things.

I think a good role model has to be sexy. Real, empowered, self-possessed women are sexy. When you're really in control of your choices, your mood, your body, and your opinions, people find you sexy.

I think being a woman in any business that's dominated by men, you have your garden variety pros and cons, where you learn how to focus and harness your various powers and weaknesses for better or for good.

Nobody ever sees me. Thank you.

There's really no honor in proving that you can carry the entire load on your own shoulders. Andit's lonely.

I think the Internet really sussed things into perspective. Because twelve years ago, I could spend my days on writing and running my band and touring and making posters and practicing with my band and working on my vocals, but I didn't spend a large pie chart of my time sifting through criticism as well, and nowadays I do, and all female artists do, because to be able to promote your work, you need to live in those spaces.

When you're afraid of someone's judgment, you can't connect with them. You're too preoccupied with the task of impressing them.

How do we let people pay for music?

If your writing is good, if it resonates, if it connects the dots for anybody out there, the lovers will come, the haters will come, support will come — sometimes in the form of money, sometimes in the form of something less expected — and it balances.

I've watched so many women, from Kathleen Hanna all the way up to Taylor Swift, whether they're pop artists or rock stars or fine artists or writers, it is the subhistory of female artists that if you're going to make art, you're also going to have a full-time job of defending your right to make art.

Take on the pain and wear it as a shirt.

I'm still trying to express my truth, my place in the world, my belief.

You are an artist when you make someone feel something deep and unexpected.

I suffer mornings most of all I feel so powerless and small By ten o'clock I'm back in bed Fighting the jury in my head

Life as it should be: all friends, all art, all music, all love, all the time.

I firmly believe in music being as free as possible. Unlocked. Shared and spread. In order for artists to survive and create, their audiences need to step up and directly support them.

I feel that part of my life's artwork is creatively dealing with all this negativity and anger and rage and hatred coming from whatever corners it's coming from and somehow manifesting all of that anger into something positive, which is such a hard job.

I hate being ignored.

I'm bisexual, but it's not the sort of thing I spent a lot of time thinking about … I've slept with girls; I've slept with guys, so I guess that's what they call it! I'm not anti trying to use language to simplify our lives.

Nothing is crueller than children who come from good homes.

I think I can define my entire life, virtuosity and business philosophy down to the core fundamental that I absolutely hate being told what to do. But like any artist or any human being out there, I desperately want to be loved, and I spend my entire life trying to balance those two facts.

The impulse to connect the dots - and to share what you've connected - is the urge that makes you an artist

We can only connect the dots we collect, which makes everything you write about you... your connections are the thread that you weave into the cloth that becomes the story that only you can tell.

I want to be happy. i want to make people happy. i do not need to be rich to do that.