Top 100 Mitski Quotes

When I go onstage and am performing the way I want to… I finally feel like myself.

I really just care about making music and how I can make it next.

I would love for Rivers Cuomo to listen to my music and see what he thinks.

I think what’s hard for me is not that I don’t get downtime to chill, it’s that I don’t get time to make music.

I have my privileges, but I do feel like at every turn there is such resistance. 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. All the time. I feel like I’m not taken seriously.

I always have strong urges to sabotage myself. Whenever someone says they like something about my music, 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.

If I ever found a place where I belonged, that in itself would be an identity crisis to me.

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.

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.

I think your ego gets in the way of making something good because it kind of blinds you from the actual art.

The whole ‘grunge-girl’ comparisons certainly are the easiest to pick out, and I appreciate that music journalists are rushed.

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.

Whenever I’ve tried to ingratiate myself to an existing community, I tend to give too much, to become whatever it is they want me to be. It’s something I do automatically – I’ve learnt to immediately adapt.

I guess you can say I ‘do the Twist.’ I like playful dance moves that aren’t too serious.

I don’t want to be a musician’s musician. I want to be an everyone’s musician.

You can never learn enough about music.

When I started making music, I was like, ‘This is something I can believe I was meant to do.’

I remember I took a music course in junior year of high school, and some girl brought in ‘Teardrops On My Guitar,’ and she was like, ‘Isn’t this song great?’ And everyone was like, ‘Who’s Taylor Swift?’ And now, every time I listen to Taylor Swift, I remember that moment.

I know for a fact that I’m problematic. I shouldn’t be looked to for any kind of guidance.

You can be heartbroken about a relationship but also, from it, realize you are you, and you’re okay with who you are or where you came from.

I think my whole identity is formed around not knowing where I’m from. It might even be that I find comfort in that confusion.

Sometimes when I perform, and it’s obvious the audience is just there to party, or if I feel a wall between me and the audience, I get existential about it.

I lived abroad most of my life in insular international communities.

Everything is so chaotic and messy in the world, and I have always felt kind of dirty.

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.

I don’t want to be elitist.

I’ve stopped wanting a home, I think, because I’ve been on tour all my life, basically.

Oftentimes, the most important decisions I make are the ones I don’t put much thought into.

I don’t set out to write something. I more just write, and later on, I discover what it’s about.

I think people don’t realize how little of being an artist is making art.

I can’t read in a car, because I’ll get sick. It’s almost instant.

I have a very conveniently photographic memory of emotions – it’s overwhelming, because things don’t fade for me.

My personality’s very obsessive-compulsive. I tend to fixate a lot.

I think music is supposed to be shared.

I don’t want to be elitist.

I would love for Rivers Cuomo to listen to my music and see what he thinks.

I hope to be a writer and musician my whole life, fingers crossed.

Tour isn’t good for writing, but it’s good for inspiration.

I’ve been asked whether I have a hobby, and have felt strangely offended that anyone would assume I have the time.

I 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.

My father was obsessed with folk music from around the world, and I think the countless artists who performed them are my biggest influences.

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.

I’m not an innovator.

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.

When I record, it’s this very precious and insular thing.

When I started making music, I was like, ‘This is something I can believe I was meant to do.’

All I want to do at karaoke is sing Mariah Carey.

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.

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.

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.

I’m so smart. I am good at doing math really quickly in my head.

I’m not an innovator.

I 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.

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.

As a woman of color, I always have to be at 150 percent and better than everybody in the room to be considered competent.

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.

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.

What’s important to me is that my songs can exist without any material anything. It’s very reflective of my ideology.

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.

I’ve been asked whether I have a hobby, and have felt strangely offended that anyone would assume I have the time.

I was a film major because, for some reason, I thought that that was a creative job that had more job opportunities. I don’t know what logic I was following, but that was my impression at the time.

Everything is so chaotic and messy in the world, and I have always felt kind of dirty.

I didn’t fit in anywhere when I grew up, but I was always American, so to survive, I created this ‘ideal America.’ Finally I came to the U.S. and realised, ‘Oh, I don’t belong here, either.’

I think growing up the way I did has made me a lot more objective, and that’s important in the process of writing and trying to look at subjective matter that way.

I don’t care about making anything new. I make music to express an emotion, and if the emotion is nostalgic, so be it.

You always want what you can’t have, and that all-American thing, from the day I was born, I could never enter that dream. That all-American white culture is something that is inherited instead of attained.

When you’re young is the one time when you get to indulge in being morose and take yourself most seriously.

I think it’s very dangerous as an artist to be comfortable.

I don’t think I’m alone in this: I’m obsessed with trying to not only be happy but maintain happiness, but my definition of happiness is skewed more towards ecstasy rather than contentment.

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.

I’m punk, but I love gold.

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.

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.

It’s very tempting, when somebody says they like this about you, to want to do that over and over.

I was one of those girls people called ‘intense.’

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.