black
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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.

Beth Orton

Heaven is what we spend our lives trying to find.
BETH ORTON

Blown Away Heaven Trying
The way I write, words can means lots of different things.
BETH ORTON

Different Mean Writing
I’m not comfortable holidaying in other people’s poverty.
BETH ORTON

Comfortable People Poverty
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

Fields Kissing Summer Wheat
From the beginning, I wanted to make dance music with a human element to it.
BETH ORTON

Elements Human Wanted
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

Cities London Pigs
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

Beautiful Book Dad
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

Bible Couple Jesus Running
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

Generation Glowing Hands
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

Blow Essence Poison
Therapy is like telling your nightmares when you’re a kid; they lose their power to hurt and control.
BETH ORTON

Hurt Kids Nightmare
I don’t read music; I taught myself guitar.
BETH ORTON

Guitar Read Taught
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

Painting Stories Want
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

Brother Insecure Trying
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

Ideas Negative Thinking
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

Drinking Kissing Sibling

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Beth Orton Quotes