I’ve been asked whether I have a hobby, and have felt strangely offended that anyone would assume I have the time.
MITSKII was a film major because, for some reason, I thought that that was a creative job that had more job opportunities. I don’t know what logic I was following, but that was my impression at the time.
More Mitski Quotes
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I didn’t fit in anywhere when I grew up, but I was always American, so to survive,
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I’d always been fascinated by death, which sounds so morbid. Especially being a woman trying to make music, I think there’s a sense that you’re never young enough, or your career is going to end soon.
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Music was the one thing that was just mine, and no one could take it from me. I created it, dictated it, and it made me not able to let go of it.
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Pop artists work really hard, and they might not work for the same things that indie artists do, but they’re still musicians, and they’re still making art.
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Growing up, I never really felt like anything was my own. I moved a lot, and I never belonged anywhere.
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I tend to not want to do that anymore. It’s not even that I don’t like it anymore: it’s that I keep trying to find ways for people to dislike me.
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I wanted to take up guitar because playing piano is a little harder. Carrying a keyboard around is harder, and finding a real piano is much harder, and I wanted to play live more, so I figured a guitar would be easier to carry around.
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In my first few years of being in New York, I had a major identity crisis because I’d never stayed in one place for so long.
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What I have a problem with is when it becomes another form of tokenization, of shrinking me into a symbol instead of a multilayered, female Asian artist.
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I think it’s very dangerous as an artist to be comfortable.
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I couldn’t wait to get out of school, but once I did, I didn’t actually know what I wanted to do with myself. I don’t really know how it happened, but I just started writing music and realized that’s what I wanted to do.
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My father was obsessed with folk music from around the world, and I think the countless artists who performed them are my biggest influences.
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I took a few piano lessons as a kid, but it didn’t last; I just learned piano from doing it over and over on my own, because I didn’t have many friends, and there was always a keyboard in the house.
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I think my real influences are out of my control, which are the things that entered my brain when I was a kid growing up.
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I try to be regimented and try to stay healthy and work out and eat properly and go to sleep. And not get too caught up in the industry in my regular life, so I can save all my expression and energy for my art.
MITSKI