Top 55 Jenny Lewis Quotes

Sometimes people come to my shows and think I’m a Christian artist, and they put their hands up in the air, like they do. But first of all, I’m a Jewish girl from the Valley, and I’m from Los Angeles. It’s funny to be misinterpreted.

I am a huge hip-hop fan, and growing up, I only listened to hip-hop, so I dressed accordingly.

I come from a very uncool profession: being a washed up child actor.

I had a huge Lisa Frank sticker collection. I traded them.

My mother’s records were formative for me, but when I became a teenager, I wanted to find songs that she wasn’t hip to. She was so hip, though, that I had to go outside rock n’ roll – so for about 10 years, I only listened to hip-hop, house and techno.

I felt like onstage I have to have a certain amount of anonymity, like, personal anonymity, to feel loose and free. When you’re up there with people who’ve known you for a decade, and you make a bad joke and you hear the cackling behind the drums, it’s hard to get lost in the moment.

Songs are really interesting in that way. Sometimes, they grow with you. Sometimes, you outgrow them.

I can’t imagine how people will react to my music. For me, it’s a really fluid process from one record to the next, but it’s really up to the listener.

Being in a band is a really magical thing because you’ve got a family and you operate as this one entity. It’s very democratic; everyone is involved in the output. But within that, there can be a lot of disagreements and strife.

Losing your parent is unlike anything.

As hard as I try to sound tough and dark, I still sound cute.

That is the true joy of being a solo artist. I can do whatever I want. I can go wherever I want. I can show up with my guitar and my song, and it can sound a hundred different ways. That’s the freedom of being on your own. The flipside is: That’s you on the cover. If it sucks, it’s your fault.

I grew up on Loretta Lynn and Dusty Springfield. I remember lying about it; it wasn’t cool to listen to country when I was 12.

It’s funny how a song can start in your mind, and then when it goes through all the filters, it ends up in a totally different spot.

I find most modern country virtually unlistenable. I can’t relate to the music or the lyrics.

I wouldn’t call it a faux pas, but I have about 12 tracksuits. I always travel in a tracksuit. I feel it makes people happy when they see me.

For me personally, I just try to prove myself in my work. I’m just trying to get better at what I do, and hopefully that will impact women in music, and hopefully the girls in the crowd will see my up there as a bandleader and think, ‘Wow, maybe I can do that one day.’

I was a big fan of ‘Days of Our Lives’ growing up.

I am a child of digital generation. I have done most of the records with Rilo Kiley on computers, on Pro Tools or other digital programs.

I think it’s always an adjustment for me, but I do feel like, ultimately, I can kind of write anywhere. It just takes a second to get back in to the groove.

When I think people like one record more than the other, then someone will surprise me.

It’s pretty amazing to write under any circumstances when someone gives you an assignment to write a song, even if it doesn’t get accepted. I’ve written songs a couple of times, some for Disney, that haven’t actually ended up in their films, but then you’re left with a song forever.

If you’re a songwriter, you have to do homework. You can exist for a while on the inspiration, but at some point, you have to sit down and have the discipline to write – to finish the poem, as they say.

I demo all of my songs on Garage Band, where I pretty much play everything – not very well, but I manage to hammer out a drum beat and a bass idea.

I love ‘Wowee Zowee.’ That was the first Pavement record I bought.

I’ve always tried to get around writing love songs, I guess because I’ve always had a hard time saying, ‘I love you.’

I’m always pretty nervous when I do anything! I walk very slowly. I’m very careful.

I think art doesn’t have to be created in a period of misery, but it certainly helps.

When you make a solo record, it’s you. It’s your name. It has to be the right songs for how you feel.

I think Chris Martin is younger than I am, but when I met him, I felt like I was talking to my father. It’s so strange, that feeling when someone is that famous – you assume that they are either older or better.

I’ve gone through terrible periods of depression. But, at the core of my being, there’s a strange, out-of-place optimist. Despite what I’m feeling, I’m always able to get up and do my job. Which means the world to me.

I have a great work ethic – from watching Lucille Ball, not necessarily my own family.

When I’m sick of myself, and when I don’t know what to say as a solo artist, I can write a song for a movie. When I don’t know where to turn musically, being in a band – Rilo Kiley or Jenny & Johnny – the collaborative nature is really exciting.

It sounds cheesy, but music has saved me in a lot of ways. If I had just continued acting, I don’t think I would be alive.

After Rilo Kiley broke up and a few really intense personal things happened, I completely melted down. It nearly destroyed me. I had such severe insomnia that, at one point, I didn’t sleep for five straight nights.

Certainly, we all wonder what is beyond, and when you lose a loved one, I think part of the grieving process includes where that person might have gone or if you’ll ever see them again. I think it forces you to look up to the sky, to the cosmos.

If I’m not crying while writing a song, I’m not doing it right.

The Rilo Kiley song ‘A Better Son/Daughter’ is my most requested song – especially for people who are at the age I was when I wrote it. It’s sort of a mid-twenties lament.

When I was a teenager, I went to Europe on a backpacking trip by myself, and I met a woman who was following Sebadoh. It was the early 1990s, and that was my introduction to indie rock.

My hair looks so good out in the desert, it’s unbelievable. It’s, like, perfectly not frizzy.

I felt like hip-hop was my music, it was like my outsider music… but then my mom started answering our phone, ‘Yo, what’s up.’ She was hearing me talk to my friends. I was like, ‘No, mom, don’t cop the hip-hop talk.’

I think the idea of opening up for a massive band is always better than actually doing it, and having your name on the ticket means more than the actual set.

You never know how things are going to turn out in a movie. You can imagine a scene one way, and it can turn out to be completely the polar opposite of what you expected. You just have to roll with the punches.

I’m a huge reggae fan. I want to go to Jamaica and make, like, Bob Marley ‘One Love’ positive songs. That’s what the world needs.

When I first started touring, we had a crappy van, and we would all share rooms. So for many years as a grown adult woman, I would share a bed with a bandmate, whether it would be Jimmy Tamborello from the Postal Service or Pierre De Reeder from Rilo Kiley, just a pillow barrier between us sleeping on the same bed.

I would never say anything’s over forever. How could you possibly know how you feel? How could you shut the door on anything?

I don’t write songs, play music and tour, really, for anyone else but myself. It’s something that I have to do to stay alive.

In the past, like for the last Rilo Kiley record, ‘Under the Blacklight,’ I wore exclusively hot pants because the themes in that record were the underbelly of Los Angeles.

I’m more in the Stones camp than the Beatles camp.

You can find me at three in the morning in my living room with a glass of wine and really bad ’90s trip hop beats blaring from my headphones.

I’m typically not a heels person.

I think you kind of lose the human aspect when you make things too perfect.

I’m not a religious person by any means. But I’m curious.

My true social media passion is making creepy short movies on Instagram.

I’m not trying to repeat myself or cater myself to one specific group of people.