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 ORTONMy 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.
More Beth Orton Quotes
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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 -
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 -
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 -
The way I write, words can means lots of different things.
BETH ORTON -
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 -
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 -
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 -
Heaven is what we spend our lives trying to find.
BETH ORTON -
When I’m on a roll nothing makes me happier or feel more satisfied, like plugging in, life makes sense.
BETH ORTON -
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 -
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 -
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 -
I don’t read music; I taught myself guitar.
BETH ORTON -
I’d say my greatest fear is fear itself.
BETH ORTON -
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