Being an outsider at all times is both unhealthy and useful, because you become much more objective about things.
MITSKII think it’s our responsibility as artists to not only fight for our art but fight for the communities that are the reason we’re able to continue making art, especially since, in Brooklyn’s case, we as artists somehow made it ‘cool’ enough for the bigger money-making industries to start taking over.
More Mitski Quotes
-
-
Then you start to realise, ‘Oh, I’m bending a lot,’ and they’re just standing there existing, and I’m bending around them. But you can’t blame them: they don’t realise it; that’s just how they already existed. It’s hard.
MITSKI -
I hate that my opinions are gonna be on record… that my opinions of other artists are going to be on record.
MITSKI -
When someone is a musician – trying to make a living off being a public figure – it’s really easy for people to see me as a face on a screen that doesn’t have a personal life.
MITSKI -
With solo shows, you have complete control over the set list. If you feel like you want to do something different or do a new song, you can just work it in. You can talk to the audience or not talk to the audience. There’s nothing that’s set.
MITSKI -
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.
MITSKI -
I don’t really listen to pop-country, but I like really, really old country that’s closer to folk. Like Johnny Cash, who is considered country.
MITSKI -
When you’re doing something you’re not used to, you kind of realize that you’re still a kid: even though the whole world around you sees you as an adult and you’re expected to act like an adult, you still haven’t actually grown up.
MITSKI -
There’s this myth that women are supposed to compete with each other or something, or we’re supposed to hate each other, and that’s totally not productive.
MITSKI -
I don’t want to be elitist.
MITSKI -
I’m so smart. I am good at doing math really quickly in my head.
MITSKI -
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.
MITSKI -
I didn’t fit in anywhere when I grew up, but I was always American, so to survive,
MITSKI -
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.
MITSKI -
When you’re an adult, things mellow out. I think when you’re a teenager and you are sad and the world is ending, everything is about that one sadness.
MITSKI -
You can never learn enough about music.
MITSKI