Beth Orton Quotes

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

Scratches Taught Writing
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 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

Fall Mirrors Sky
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 manager said the next best inspiration to heartbreak is travel, and it’s true.
BETH ORTON

Inspiration Next Said
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

Believe Men Thinking
When I was really young I used to collect frog spawn. I made a pond out of an old sink and I loved to spend hours watching the frogs grow.
BETH ORTON

Frogs Hours Ponds
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’d say my greatest fear is fear itself.
BETH ORTON

Good Greatest Fear Say
Heaven is what we spend our lives trying to find.
BETH ORTON

Blown Away Heaven Trying
Even when I haven’t had money, I found money to travel. It’s a luxury that’s a kind of necessity, I think.
BETH ORTON

Kind Luxury Thinking
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
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

People Play Writing
The way I write, words can means lots of different things.
BETH ORTON

Different Mean Writing
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 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

Love Sea Swimming
I’m not comfortable holidaying in other people’s poverty.
BETH ORTON

Comfortable People Poverty
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
When I’m on a roll nothing makes me happier or feel more satisfied, like plugging in, life makes sense.
BETH ORTON

Feels Makes Satisfied Sense
Norfolk is not on the way to anywhere, you don’t stop off on the way somewhere else – it’s an end in itself. You have to want to go there; it’s an effort.
BETH ORTON

Effort Else Somewhere Want
I don’t read music; I taught myself guitar.
BETH ORTON

Guitar Read Taught
One time I completely thought I’d turned into a werewolf and was sure I could see hairs sprouting from my face. At those times I’d suddenly go very quiet and not talk to anyone, stunned from the developments, being a werewolf and all.
BETH ORTON

Development Faces Hair
I get a feeling, on a guitar, and I sort of mess around until something resonates with me, and then I just find that what happens is that a melody comes, and with that, words.
BETH ORTON

Feelings Guitar Melody
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
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
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

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