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.
MITSKII guess you can say I ‘do the Twist.’ I like playful dance moves that aren’t too serious.
More Mitski Quotes
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I think it’s very dangerous as an artist to be comfortable.
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I have this thing about being acknowledged and accepted by institutions.
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All I want to do at karaoke is sing Mariah Carey.
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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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Being an outsider makes you a really good writer.
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I could never enter that dream. That all-American white culture is something that is inherited instead of attained.
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What’s important to me is that my songs can exist without any material anything. It’s very reflective of my ideology.
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On tour, people know that if they ever ask me what I want to eat, I will always say Asian food. I’m becoming a stereotype, but it’s what I want to eat. I want to eat rice.
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A lot of musicians talk about how they were into music from the start; they always wanted to be musicians. It wasn’t like that for me. I didn’t think of it as a job or a career – it was just something that was constant.
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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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It would actually feel forced or unnatural to try to do a different singing style or to try to change my sound completely.
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I really just care about making music and how I can make it next.
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I think your ego gets in the way of making something good because it kind of blinds you from the actual art.
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I tend to kind of try to use what’s in my environment to the best of my ability rather than seek out things that I don’t already have.
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When you are a minority, it’s your job to bend, and when you love someone, you really want to make it work.
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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.
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I don’t think I have the kind of creativity to write fiction.
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I don’t think ‘bleak’ is a bad thing.
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I understand that, because there are so many musicians, you have to make artists into brands, but I sometimes feel like I have to be some kind of non-human icon in order for people to listen to my music.
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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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Maybe this is a made-up belief to preserve myself, but I do believe that everyone has a purpose, and my purpose is to put out music that means something.
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I’m not an innovator.
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I’ve been very careful to always make clear that I am a real person. That’s why I’m on social media a lot.
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Being an outsider at all times is both unhealthy and useful, because you become much more objective about things.
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As a woman of color, I always have to be at 150 percent and better than everybody in the room to be considered competent.
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I know for a fact that I’m problematic. I shouldn’t be looked to for any kind of guidance.
MITSKI