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 ORTONTo 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.
More Beth Orton Quotes
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Therapy is like telling your nightmares when you’re a kid; they lose their power to hurt and control.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I don’t read music; I taught myself guitar.
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Even when I haven’t had money, I found money to travel. It’s a luxury that’s a kind of necessity, I think.
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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.
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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.
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From the beginning, I wanted to make dance music with a human element to it.
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The way I write, words can means lots of different things.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I’d say my greatest fear is fear itself.
BETH ORTON