Grimes Quotes & Sayings

#1. I just watched another person I care deeply about basically turn into Gollum and my heart is broken.

#2. You don't just have to be influenced by rock, or goth, anymore. It's okay to say, 'My influences are Tin Pan music from Bali and Rihanna.' There are still so many combinations that haven't been done yet.

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#3. Fashion can be a really powerful tool, but it's also a place where you can be totally humiliated and have your power taken from you.

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#4. I'm not good at being, like, a sexy girl.

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#5. Ugly girls generally don't become successful in music. And it sucks because it's a standard that just exists.

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#6. It's interesting to be a front person who is controlling the majority of the sound.

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#7. Lets make it known that we don't want to give away our beautiful homeland to corporate interests. It is our right as Canadians to be part of these decisions. The only thing standing between this world and environmental catastrophe is us

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#8. I've always been such a nerd.

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#9. I think one of the reasons I'm successful as a musician is that the first like 30 shows I played, I played with no monitors standing in front of guitar amps in a shitty, smoky warehouse where people were screaming and wasted, knocking over my gear. So shows after that seem pretty easy!

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#10. I was raised in a Catholic household and went to a Catholic school, and my childhood brain perceived medieval Catholicism as an action movie: There's this crazy omnipresent guy who can destroy you at any moment.

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#11. The groove can go for like three days - once I'm in it it will just keep going until I'm totally exhausted. But that's how I like to work, I like to be away from everyone and just get in the zone, and stay there for as long as I can keep it there.

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#12. I think my music's kind of cold, but I don't know if it's related to the weather. It might be because it's always grey [in Montreal], it's very depressing.

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#13. Art gives me an outlet where I can be aggressive in a world where I usually can't be.

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#14. I listen to a lot of medieval music.

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#15. I have a lot of Japanese friends: I grew up in Vancouver, and there's this huge Japanese population over there.

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#16. The most valuable live thing for me is when people look like they're having a good time.

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#17. I just can't perform well unless I'm wearing jeans.

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#18. I feel like vocals are to music what portraits are to painting. They're the humanity. Landscapes are good and fine, but at the end of the day everyone loves the Mona Lisa.

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#19. I don't know if I would ever have costume changes - usually I just end up taking off my shoes, I get so sweaty, and ... I just need to be comfortable.

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#20. I need to be able to work for 20 or 30 hours in one go in complete darkness, alone with just the computer glow.

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#21. Just because something might not have a deep philosophical meaning doesn't mean it's not important or relevant.

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#22. You want people to hate you. If you're just making people happy, you're like Mumford & Sons.

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#23. Removing all stimulation around you is a really positive thing in terms of stimulating your creativity.

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#24. I prefer making videos to making music.

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#25. When I'm making something I need it to be catchy - I need it to hit the sweet spot.

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#26. When I first started out, I was making really slow, psychedelic ambient music because it was all I could do.

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#27. I've never lived outside of Canada, so I've been really cold my entire life. Most of my memories are coloured by the fact that I was really cold, just ... all the time!

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#28. I'm against spending money to record.

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#29. My manager lives on my block; four of the apartments in my apartment complex of seven are people I know. It's a really close-knit community, and almost everyone on these few blocks are artists or graphic designers, because we live right on the cusp of a warehouse district.

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#30. I love pop music, but I also love noise music, IDM - anything really, I get something out of most kinds of music. I just need to enjoy the process.

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#31. I think the internet is kind of redefining what it is to be a teenager. Because there's a lot of media that's aimed at teenagers that other people are getting into. But, conversely, pornography or stuff that's intended for adults is completely readily available to anyone, like teenagers.

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#32. If I think about what other people are thinking when I'm making music, I just can't do it. It's too withheld - I need to go totally over the top, and then kind of clean it up a bit and make it more reasonable after the fact.

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#33. There are a lot of musicians I've met on Twitter where it was like, 'Hey, I like your music' - and then I ended up meeting them and it turned into a friendship.

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#34. I think Canadians make a lot of music because we're stuck inside all the time.

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#35. It's kind of like I'm Phil Spector, and I'm forcing a young girl to make pop music and perform exhaustively. Except, instead of it being someone else, that girl is also me.

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#36. I'm actually not a particularly negative person, but I feel like most things are better when they're not actualized. The motivation that comes from wanting something is so much more driving of people than actually getting it.

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#37. I like to aestheticize every possible thing that can be aestheticized.

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#38. Basically, I'm really impressionable and have no sense of consistency in anything I do.

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#39. There used to be a lot of industry in Montreal, and now there's not, so it's really easy to get huge, empty spaces where you can practice and make music or make art for very, very cheap.

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#40. The last thing I think about when I'm making music is its reception.

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#41. I'm a very unhealthy person, and Montreal is very cold, and I'm usually sick when I'm there.

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#42. My set can get really screamo and aggressive, or it can be ambient and Enya-esque.

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#43. I think if you're good at art, you'll be good at most types of art.

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#44. My favorite music is never the music that anyone else likes, and other people's favorite songs are always my least favorite.

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#45. If I'm a bad mood, I can't go on stage and smile.

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#46. I'm not trained in music.

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#47. Whenever I'm making music I'm always waiting for the shivers to happen - that's an important thing for me.

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#48. I like going crazy. And not just for art - I like extremes in general.

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#49. My image seems to be so infantilized, and I don't really know why. It belittles the music.

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#50. I'm not interested in making art unless I'm totally freaked out and worried people are going to hate it.

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#51. It takes me probably about four hours to get into the groove [with making music]. And it's really important for me to not break the groove.

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#52. Most of my music videos were made for under $200.

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#53. I'm not, like, a natural performer. It's sort of a thing that I've had to learn to do.

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#54. I don't want to have to compromise my morals in order to make a living.

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#55. I've always been very intense about everything I do.

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#56. When I'm making a song that's very Grimes, it just feels very insular and it feels weird to have someone else do something on it.

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#57. Usually when I make music, in my head I'm like 'this isn't Grimes, this is just some other project that you can release later, so there's no pressure and it doesn't matter and no-one's ever gonna hear it'.

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#58. If you look at the way people behave at shows, icons are now musicians; they are the people that we worship.

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#59. I usually like to get people in because I don't have a band or anything. In cities where I have friends, I try to get them to come out and dance for me.

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#60. I write music better in the winter, I prefer making music when it's dark.

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#61. I believe the human mind is a very fallible thing, but it's the only thing that I can really know, I guess.

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#62. I can't censor myself; it's really important for me to say how I feel.

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#63. I want to make Grimes a high-fashion sci-fi act.

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#64. I love humanity, I love the way people look

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#65. Sometimes you find people who are magnetic, but once they get in front of a camera, they freak out and get weird.

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#66. I get offers to do huge-budget music videos with big production companies all the time, but I have no interest.

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#67. I've seen Animal Collective live, and I suffered permanent hearing loss from that show!

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#68. The way that you present yourself visually totally dictates your audience and everything that anyone thinks about you.

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#69. I'm a very nervous, shy person.

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#70. Music is a religion to me and my friends.

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#71. The thing is, I really like working. If I sit around too much, I get really bad anxiety.

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#72. I think my sound is post-Internet.

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#73. It's obviously funny to be a meme, so I could be down with it in that regard, but it also belittles one's art.

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#74. By the time I'm 50, there is probably going to be a nuclear holocaust. I should just enjoy myself.

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#75. If I went on 'American Idol,' I would definitely be kicked out immediately.

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#76. I like performing, but I usually get really sick when I'm on tour, and it's just hard.

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#77. I went through my adolescence having this revelatory experience - I can have any music I want, and I can get it immediately. For me and for a lot of people I know, there's this musical eclecticism that happened.

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#78. Especially with music, people want confidence.

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#79. In America there's lot of cool cities, but in Canada there's, like, well, Vancouver, Toronto and Halifax may be cool, but they're so expensive. Montreal is the only city that's affordable but also has buses and culture.

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#80. I'm a super-introverted person.

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#81. I'm just very obsessed with Japanese stuff in general.

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#82. I don't own anything designer.

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#83. I know texture is really important, but I think texture and stuff precedes songwriting a lot of the time these days.

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#84. Mariah Carey is my favorite singer because her voice sounds utterly groundless. It's not even a human voice; it almost sounds mechanical.

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#85. I want to make an a cappella record to release for free.

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#86. I was incredibly unpopular in high school but also extremely notorious.

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#87. You rarely find someone who sings really well and who produces really well; it's a problem, and I just think it's a missing link in the music scene.

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#88. I start a lot of songs and throw them out because the energy is not right. It's almost like the file becomes cursed. I have to delete it.

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#89. I truly love 'Gangnam Style.' I guess it's a meme. I feel like it's one of the few times where the meme and the quality combines nicely.

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#90. I'm so sick of my own music that I don't know if I can edit another video, which involves hundreds of hours of listening to your own song again and again and again. It becomes so grating after a while.

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#91. Even though I really admire what Beyonce does, and she's probably got one of the best live shows in the world - honestly! - that's so not my style.

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#92. I'm tired of being considered vapid for liking pop music or caring about fashion as if these things inherently lack substance or as if the things I enjoy somehow make me a lesser person.

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#93. I'm sad that it's uncool or offensive to talk about environmental or human rights issues.

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#94. I like creating beauty out of scary things.

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#95. It's really hard to be on stage and packing your gear when people who just saw you play are in the room, because they all just want to talk to you.

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