Beth Orton Quotes

#1. Kissing was something I did a lot of. Kissing in a wheat field as the sun begins to set on a summer's evening, with the haze of that light.

Beth Orton

#2. We're all like little ants who scurry around with the materials that are at hand right now. Each generation finds new materials. Its just evolution, isn't it?

Beth Orton

#3. Therapy is like telling your nightmares when you're a kid; they lose their power to hurt and control.

Beth Orton

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

Beth Orton

#5. I learned to embrace my individuality, and if that meant writing a song on one chord over and over again, then that's what I do.

Beth Orton

#6. 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.

Beth Orton

#7. Heaven is what we spend our lives trying to find.

Beth Orton

#8. 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.

Beth Orton

#9. 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.

Beth Orton

#10. I've also been writing with my guitarist, Ted Barnes, and he's amazing. Writing with him has taught me a lot about my own writing process, in the sense that it's incredably personal to write with someone else from scratch.

Beth Orton

#11. When I first started writing, a friend said I should be careful because I'm letting people know how to reach right in and play with my workings. And they do!

Beth Orton

#12. I don't believe in trouble. Because I think that trouble is sometimes good, sometimes bad. I've been known to be called trouble, which I think is quite a compliment. But I suppose, thinking about it, that my best and worst trouble has always had something to do with a man.

Beth Orton

#13. I get a feeling, on a guitar, and I sort of mess around until something resonates with me, and then I just find that what happens is that a melody comes, and with that, words.

Beth Orton

#14. The way I write, words can means lots of different things.

Beth Orton

#15. The upside to smoking is that you get to be social. I was looking for a light when I bumped into Ben Harper's manager. A couple of days later, Ben and I were in the studio.

Beth Orton

#16. I don't read music; I taught myself guitar.

Beth Orton

#17. 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.

Beth Orton

#18. I used to think it was good to kind of work within your limitations.

Beth Orton

#19. I'm not comfortable holidaying in other people's poverty.

Beth Orton

#20. My dad got me a chemistry book one Christmas and I burnt the garden shed down. I remember there was the most beautiful smell forever after in the remains.

Beth Orton

#21. 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.

Beth Orton

#22. My manager said the next best inspiration to heartbreak is travel, and it's true.

Beth Orton

#23. I have a friend who says the best boyfriends are ones with intimidating, good-looking older brothers. The boyfriends try harder because they're so insecure. Maybe I'm the female equivalent.

Beth Orton

#24. I love the water more than anything. I'm not very good at sunbathing - I get really bored. I love swimming and I love being like a fish and getting in the sea and just - I don't know, it feels right.

Beth Orton

#25. Norfolk is not on the way to anywhere, you don't stop off on the way somewhere else - it's an end in itself. You have to want to go there; it's an effort.

Beth Orton

#26. From the beginning, I wanted to make dance music with a human element to it.

Beth Orton

#27. 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.

Beth Orton

#28. When I'm on a roll nothing makes me happier or feel more satisfied, like plugging in, life makes sense.

Beth Orton

#29. Even when I haven't had money, I found money to travel. It's a luxury that's a kind of necessity, I think.

Beth Orton

#30. Before you worry about what genre it is, about whether it's a loop or a drum, it's about what suits the song. It's using what's within your reach, but also reaching for everything you can. I don't know if I always get it right, because I don't know every sound yet.

Beth Orton

#31. I'd say my greatest fear is fear itself.

Beth Orton

#32. Sugaring season is the season when you tap the trees for sugar that turns into maple syrup. I've married someone from Vermont, so it's an expression I kept hearing, and I'm like, 'What is that? That's just so beautiful.' I like the idea it's the very, very first murmurings of spring.

Beth Orton

#33. I just like the child's nightmares and therapy, once an experience has found the light of day I'm no longer under its spell, I'm free to tell it. I hope in telling honestly I can in some way help other people to do so also.

Beth Orton

#34. I was born on a pig farm in Norfolk. We grew up in the city called Norwich in Norfolk, then I moved to London when I was thirteen.

Beth Orton

#35. 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.

Beth Orton

#36. 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.

Beth Orton

#37. You can have all sorts of relationships, but there's something with musicians working together where you can have relationship that can just continue to grow in a beautiful way.

Beth Orton