61 Quotes by Beth Orton

When I was really young I used to collect frog spawn. I made a pond out of an old sink and I loved to spend hours watching the frogs grow.

The husk could be some useless bloke or losing myself and changing my DNA with bottomless grief.

To me songwriting is more like redemption. I can extract the poison or the pollen, the essence from a situation and the rest becomes a husk that blows away.

I want it to be more universal than that - like a painter doesn't have to explain his life story away to justify his painting.

I get told I'm a confessional songwriter, which gets on my tits because I think of negative connotations attached to the word "confessional". I don't like the idea of songwriting being therapy. I don't want to put myself so directly in the foreground.

I was scared of the Bible - it seemed whenever I read it I got bad luck. Then I befriended a couple of Jesus's disciples and I used to show them modern life - how to run the hot and cold taps and things like that. They seemed alright but it didn't change my feelings about the Bible jinx.

One time I completely thought I'd turned into a werewolf and was sure I could see hairs sprouting from my face. At those times I'd suddenly go very quiet and not talk to anyone, stunned from the developments, being a werewolf and all.

I didn't jump a lot of trees because I didn't like heights. I liked getting a mirror and walking around with it facing the sky. I'd imagine I was walking in the tops of the trees and falling into the sky, or walking up the stairs whilst going down.

At about the age of ten, my friends and I discovered the joys of sitting in graveyards drinking merrydown cider and kissing and stealing our elder siblings' records.