Karen O Quotations

For me, California is all about rest, relaxation, space.

I'm not a 21-year-old angsty self-destructive rapscallion anymore.

I'm in the camp that needs to discover and take risks, sometimes it's with the promise of something special and new, sometimes it's to stay awake, either way it's much more stressful with all the uncertainty but worth the pain in the end.

I'm not a quitter. I believe in following things through.

I feel like there's a hunger in the culture now for the live experience maybe as a counterpoint to the more sort of synthetic lives that we've been living.

Working pretty much nonstop as an artist, the hardest thing is to know what to do with yourself when you have some time off. You struggle with yourself to take a vacation.

Bands that I've loved over the years are the ones that have a certain myth around them.

I love bass, I really do. Bass is ace!

I was a complete outsider in high school.

I was just totally taken by Michael Jackson when I was a little kid, like everyone else.

My onstage persona really is a persona, you know, and really the moment I step onstage, it kind of kicks into gear.

I feel like every five to seven years I really need to put myself in this position of discomfort and exploration, just to survive. Otherwise I feel like I'm falling asleep, like I'll go crazy if I don't do it.

Well, Freddie Mercury is a really huge rock star in my head. I've always thought he was just so tough and such an amazing entertainer, really a contradiction in many ways as well. So he was incredible.

Being on the road with rock, its pretty much 90 percent guys.

I plead total ignorance to Led Zeppelin. I am totally in the dark about them.

Yeah, I can't separate the art from the music and the music from the art. I think that stems from going to school for film first, and kind of stumbling onto music as my career.

The simplest idea of someone coming to your home to pamper you at a time when all your energy is being expended to fight a personal battle, is much more than just feeling good about how you look. Beauty Bus gives its clients renewed internal strength to keep fighting.

Mary Ocher gives me the chills, she frightens me with her feral soul. Her sound is of a true outsider artist, immaculately self possessed. Was this recorded this century? Or out of a basement that's she's been imprisoned all her life? Time to set her loose on the world. I'm so happy she exists. Set me free Mary!

You have to open up on stage.

Sophomore records are historically really difficult.

It's almost embarrassing how well-behaved I was, which is probably why I do things like spit water on myself onstage as an adult.

When you train a horse on a daily basis, you're a part of the horse's movement, you're a part of his motion. Everything that the horse experiences is coming from you. There's a total connection -- a true friendship -- and the connection touches the soul completely.