Laura Marling Quotations

I get up, go and get a coffee, and go do the crossword - I'm loyal to one particular paper, the 'Guardian' - and that's my idea of a perfect morning.

I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night. I feel like it must be universal. Everybody must know that somewhere.

Age is relative. Experience is relative. And I think often intensity is confused with maturity.

People don't appreciate music any more. They don't adore it. They don't buy vinyl and just love it. They love their laptops like their best friend, but they don't love a record for its sound quality and its artwork.

I'm incredibly neurotic and a control freak. I like the thought that if there's going to be anyone to blame it's going to be me.

I'm not religious, I'm not romantic and I live purely by logic. I make every decision by logic and sometimes that leads me to the right and sometimes to the wrong decision.

I feel increasingly like age is very irrelevant. Quite often, cynicism is confused with wisdom, and my scorn is confused with a knowing, which I don't have.

I feel sometimes that I'm in a constant state of being lost in translation, and I guess that why I write songs.

I need some isolation, it's necessary to me, that's just who I am. I need to be left alone.

Womanhood is something you dont consider until it hits you.

I know there are lots of positives in the evolution of technology, but I also think it will be responsible for the end of a unique character, of a specific kind of geographical culture. The world is getting so small, and mass production is getting so big. Everything is in danger of becoming the same.

I'm a songwriter, and I understand artistic licence. We can embellish, go on little journeys and explore our inner selves. It can be quite self-indulgent.

I'm a lot more observational than personal in my writing. My writing is mostly a lot of questions without answers.

It took a lot of time and practice for me to realise that there's no point trying to be something you're not.

I know how ridiculous this sounds because of the job I do but I don't believe in romanticism and make-believe.

I'm reluctantly interested in love and helplessly interested in logic and yet they're so conflicting. And they're both necessary for a happy balance, a happy existence... I think.

I think your most intimate thoughts are only honest when they're in your head.

I've always loved books by the Bronte sisters. I love Jane Austen, too. I'm more influenced by people like her than by pop culture.

It is quite hard to relax in London. I always say I'd move somewhere quieter, but I am a bit of a confirmed urbanite now - it crept up on me without me noticing. I always think that I function quite well on my own, unusually so, but then I'm reminded how important people are to me.

My reaction to everything in life is when it gets a bit complicated to water it down and make it simple again.

All my songs come from me because I only seem able to write about myself and my experiences.

I definitely tell things at arm's length but that is conscious. No part of me wants everybody to know what's going on.

I love the way you can fall in love with a piece of literature; how words alone can get your heart doing that.

I'd like to make music for as long as I can; it feels like something I need to do.

I'd prefer to be good, but I'm not always. I struggle.

Now that I'm feeling the responsibilities of adulthood, the choices we make become an incredible weight.

When I'm singing I feel like I'm talking to someone. I'm in conversation when I perform - either with myself or with whomever is listening.

I am slightly fascinated by the question of whether humanity is capable of change. I may have come to the conclusion that we're not, but we keep trying.

You are what you can prove you've done. That's how people judge you.

I've noticed that, with many of the authors I like, I tend to think I would dislike them as human beings or that there'd be a healthy amount of debate if I ever did meet them.

I never edit the songs that come out. And they tend to come out as a whole. The closest thing I have ever done to editing them is just cutting out a verse, but never rewriting lyrics.

I just think of everything I do and how happy it will make me to do it. I don't like having my photograph taken, for instance, so I don't do that often.

There's huge amounts of nonsense that goes with everything surrounding music and art. All the things you have to do promote yourself - there's huge amounts of nonsense.

I am quite competitive. In stupid things like card games.

I like living in the city, but I like being able to get out of it as and when I like.

Why fear death? Be scared of living.

I do so hate to be forced to be anything than other than what I am.

I'm a bit of a magpie: whatever I see or hear or read feeds into the songs,

I speak because I can to anyone I trust enough to listen.

Take me somewhere I can grow Give me something let me go Tell me something I don't know

The romanticised life, where all the great poetry and music and art of the world comes from, is great but it requires a lot of self-indulgence.

I remember my father playing me Same Situation when I was a nipper, and saying how nobody since has done melodies as well as Joni Mitchell. I concur. The thing that most affected me was just her resonance, and that is something she must have been born with.

Lover please do not fall to your knees it's not like I believe in everlasting love

I made an important decision, which was to pursue happiness. Rather than accept unhappiness. That's why I'm here, and it's great. I'm in a very good place in my life.

I find it dull when my heart meets my mind

But if i sit here and weep I'll be blown over by the slightest of breeze

I can't give up that quick My life is a candle and a wick You can put it out, but you can't break it down In the end we are waiting to be lit

A friend is a friend forever And a good one will never leave, never

There's a house across the river, but alas, I cannot swim I'll live my life regretting that I never jumped in

I thought ‘I wonder what will happen if I try and root myself somewhere?‘ Look back over the past eight years.

People think I look odd onstage. But the way I deal with being incredibly nervous is by concentrating really hard.

My songs are not pretty. They're what I call optimistic realism.

I'm the first to admit that I'm still pretty young,

I feel like I'm creeping closer to finding the situation that triggers songwriting, which is obviously an extreme of an emotion.

I think I'll feel out of place wherever I go on earth, forever. But that's fine. I have to make my peace with that.

When a song wants to be written, it will be written.

I think everybody who relates to music is kind of isolated. It's lonely. Everyone who uses the creative side of their brain is that much removed from reality. They are looking for answers wherever they can find them.

It’s hard to accept yourself as someone you don’t desire / As someone you don’t want to be.

I don't need to sell tons of records, but I want longevity. I want to make music for the rest of my life.

I was an incredibly misanthrope. I couldn't relate to people my age, and I'm not sure why, as I wasn't particularly smart or interesting

No one starts playing my kind of music to make a fortune. But I do want to keep doing what I do and I do want to continue selling records. And I would, eventually, quite like some money.

I've got my laptop, but it troubles me in many ways. I don't have Twitter or Facebook or anything like that. It ruins a romantic idea, which might just be an illusion, a sense of depth or continuity. I know there are lots of positives in the evolution of technology, but I also think it will be responsible for the end of a unique character, of a specific kind of geographical culture. The world is getting so small, and mass production is getting so big. Everything is in danger of becoming the same.

I would never sit and write a song in front of anyone, because you're so vulnerable. I don't know at what point in the process that it becomes acceptable to pass them on. When a song wants to be written, it will be written. When it does come, I will very rarely go back and edit lyrics. I'm quite a rational human being, and the only part of my life that I can't rationalise, or can't make sense of, is how a song gets written or why.

Oh! To not need cognitive justification for every single thing. Wouldn't that be a life?

I sound awful saying it but I think it can be like that. I see a lot of people in unstimulating relationships. And not just boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. They find themselves in stagnant friendships. If people were a little less scared [of ending things] they'd get more out of life… You meet the right person at the right time and they fulfil a certain something in your life. You fulfil something in theirs. But there's a time limit to that. Unless you choose to be bloody good company for the rest of your life, do you know what I mean?

If I don't have an outlet in which to express myself...throug h songwriting or other mediums...I get a bit jittery.