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.
MITSKIGrowing up, I never really felt like anything was my own. I moved a lot, and I never belonged anywhere.
More Mitski Quotes
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Things seem to take so much longer for me to do. I have to say things 10 times instead of once. I have to knock on 10 different doors instead of two. For everything.
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I always have strong urges to sabotage myself.
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I don’t think ‘bleak’ is a bad thing.
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My personality’s very obsessive-compulsive. I tend to fixate a lot.
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I have this thing about being acknowledged and accepted by institutions.
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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.
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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 love someone and care about them, you want what’s best for them, and it’s always the hardest thing to realize maybe you aren’t what’s best for them, how hard you try.
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I’d always been fascinated by death, which sounds so morbid. Especially being a woman trying to make music, I think there’s a sense that you’re never young enough, or your career is going to end soon.
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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 lived abroad most of my life in insular international communities.
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Pop artists work really hard, and they might not work for the same things that indie artists do, but they’re still musicians, and they’re still making art.
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I can’t read in a car, because I’ll get sick. It’s almost instant.
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I think music is supposed to be shared.
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I’m Japanese, and I’m also white American, and neither camp wants me in their camp.
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I took a few piano lessons as a kid, but it didn’t last; I just learned piano from doing it over and over on my own, because I didn’t have many friends, and there was always a keyboard in the house.
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I know for a fact that I’m problematic. I shouldn’t be looked to for any kind of guidance.
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Being an outsider makes you a really good writer.
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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.
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I don’t want to be a musician’s musician. I want to be an everyone’s musician.
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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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Whenever someone says they like something about my music.
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It’s very tempting, when somebody says they like this about you, to want to do that over and over.
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I’ve been asked whether I have a hobby, and have felt strangely offended that anyone would assume I have the time.
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I was one of those girls people called ‘intense.’
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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.
MITSKI