78 Quotes by Arlo Parks

When I was seven, I sang 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow' in assembly and the teachers were crying because it was so emotional!

My attention span was quite short and I just wanted to use a lot of beautiful words. When I read a poem like 'Howl', or 'Lady Lazarus' by Sylvia Plath, I felt myself being moved - I wanted to do that for other people.

When you start doing music as your job and there are so many peripheral things around it, it's great to have a reminder to focus on what is good for myself, my body, my health and my work.

Sometimes the world is just weird and you have to just roll with the punches.

The way that I write is very instinctual and based off raw feeling--I'm a very emotional person and I think that comes across in my writing. Also the songwriting that I enjoy, for example Elliott Smith, Leonard Cohen and Nico tend to be both photographic and visceral.

I make sure to sit down for at least five minutes a day to just capture whatever passes through my mind.

I usually just write a song and record it that day, and then that's kind of it. I'm not very good at going back and editing and tinkering it. It's pretty immediate.

Honestly, I've been reading a lot of books on visual art. I've been reading a lot of books by Olivia Lang, I've been listening to a lot of folk and singer-songwriter music, but also a lot of electronic and really hard techno. I'm just trying to create something that pulls from everywhere and that hopefully feels unique.

When I was younger, there was that desire to be cool and to fit in and to look a certain way. And I was quite an introverted kid who wrote plays in her spare time, so I didn't feel very cool.