Top 60 KT Tunstall Quotes

On tour with me, it’s like fluffy-bunny land. Everyone loves every-one else.

I always try to travel as light as possible. I feel really embarrassed having loads of luggage.

I was very into tribal techno and used to go and really lose myself in great dance music.

Touring can get really hard if you’re not hitting some fashionable zeitgeist.

It’s a shame that when you’ve actually lived some life and have something to write about, they’re saying you’re too old to come out and play it.

Don’t let your parents telling you that you shouldn’t do something stop you from doing it.

I’ve never considered myself a locked-down straight person. I’ve had relationships with girls.

I guess if you make quality music then it has a longevity and it will find its place.

I know it sounds weird, but the kind of music I write isn’t the kind of music that I listen to, which is quite underground, left-of-centre stuff like PJ Harvey and Tom Waits.

Skiing fast feels like complete freedom to me.

When I was seventeen, I left Scotland to go to Kent, a well-to-do boarding school in Connecticut, where there was a contingent of really naughty kids.

I don’t let housekeeping in when I stay in hotels. It cuts down on all the caustic cleaning products and aggressive water usage, and I never use the little plastic bottles of toiletries they set out.

I often talk too much and don’t listen enough.

I get so frustrated with all these so-called singer-songwriters coming out and they don’t write!

When I went to university I survived on jacket potatoes and pasta for three years.

I can do the vocal acrobatics but I really try not to. I’ve always been drawn to singers who sing it like it is, pure, straight down the line: Ella Fitzgerald, Patti Smith, Carole King. Simplicity is really important to me.

Touring is such a major sacrifice, especially as you get older, to be away from friends and family and home and any sort of routine or home comforts.

I write songs, I play a guitar and that’s it.

British music lovers in general are dreadfully concerned about being cool, but I’m quite happy to grab uncool by the horns at any opportunity.

The only regular exercise I do is playing my shows, which are basically two hours of aerobics.

It’s unacceptable to tour using non-environmentally friendly fuel when there are alternatives.

My parents’ concern has been one of my greatest assets – I needed something to kick against. If they’d supported me every step of the way I might not have had enough fire in my belly to get where I have. Then I think: was this whole thing reverse psychology, did you really go to those lengths?

I have always been a great fan of albums that are cathartic and that you can listen to them together and you can relate to them as a group of people or as friends.

I grew up thinking, ‘You go to university, you get your degree, you get a job, you get married and then you have a family.’ But when I got to the point in my life where I had all those things, and was looking to start a family, I was miserable. I realised I didn’t want kids.

Most of my friends in London are musicians, but the ones in Scotland have proper jobs.

It strikes me as very odd for someone to think, ‘You know what, if I put on a bikini, I may shift some more records,’ but it happens. If people are comfortable with that, fine, but it’s not something that would ever cross my mind.

I’ve always loved the idea of ‘Guilty Pleasures.’

I’ve always been a huge fan of Beck.

My first memories of life were Californian.

What I noticed about living by the sea when I moved to London was that it’s really bad when you only have lots of other people to compare yourself to. I grew up relating to the land as well as other people.

When I tried to get a record deal, only one label wanted me. The rest said ‘oh, we’ve already got a girl with a guitar.’ Can you imagine them ever saying that to a guy?

I’ve got my roots in Northern Ireland – my biological father’s side of the family were from Belfast.

I work better under pressure. I was the local badminton champion when I was a kid, and there was another girl who used to thrash me for the five days leading up to the tournament and then I would just nail her to the floor in the competition.

When you make an album, you have to decide how much you want to give away; you have to decide how much you want to open up. Because the more you open up the more rewarding it can be but the more dangerous it can be. If you really open up and it gets panned it’s really painful.

Like a lot of young people growing up in the middle of nowhere, I was desperate to leave my small town behind, but music reconnected me to my roots.

I’ve never been one to indulge in out and out depression when it comes to songwriting.

It feels like your subconscious can be way ahead of you, as a songwriter. You can write a song that you think is about one thing and months later you’re playing it and thinking, hang on, this is completely informing where I am now.

Getting to know myself changed everything. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.

I believe that the Universe is like a single organism, and we are all little nerve endings feeding our experiences back into a whole.

I didn’t find fame particularly difficult, partly because I’m proud to be able to say I’m the most unrecognisable face in pop.

Let’s face it – the electric guitar is way sexier than the acoustic.

I’ve never been a confessional writer.

I’ve always felt at home in America. Obviously, there’s down sides to everywhere – the politics of America can be hard to take but it’s not great here either. I really love the country’s landscape and I’ve travelled it many times.

I had a job for a year, working in a high-quality whiskey-and-wine shop.

Politics for me is when I feel a personal engagement between people: I don’t trust politicians.

What was incredible about the Maldives was that the entire island we were on consisted of sand. There didn’t seem to be any dirt. You could walk around for hours barefoot with your white trousers skimming the ground, and they’d still be pristine white.

You know, we were outdoorsy types, my folks, and one of the first tapes I got, a friend gave me a cassette tape of Ella Fitzgerald singing with the Count Basie orchestra. And it was the first time, really, that someone’s voice had really spoken to me, and it was just so pure.

I like that I have a boyish figure, because I love wearing men’s suits.

If I can be somewhere with sunshine and have bare feet and a book, I’m happy.

My maternal grandmother was Cantonese, so I’m a quarter Chinese and half Irish and a quarter Scottish and raised by English parents living in Scotland.

I used to take it much more to heart. Now I realise that negativity has almost everything to do with the person delivering it and very little to do with you yourself.

I’m not really that comfortable, to be honest, singing about my darkest moments.

Albums tend to dictate what they need. Every time I have made an album it sort of feels like it is decided for me how that album is going to sound; it is not really a cerebral decision where you sit down and decide that you are going to make an album that sounds like ‘this.’

The only thing I know about being Asian is that my hair is black and my eyelashes are straight and I have strange eyebrows.

I was adopted. I was born in Edinburgh, and adopted when I was about two weeks old. And it’s a good thing, I think, really, that back then, in ’75 when I was born, you were really given a lot more information than you’re given now when you’re adopted. And you know, you can access that information when you’re older.

I really enjoy tech, but I’m not voracious – I’ll find stuff because I want to use it, not because I’m interested in what’s out there. It’s a sort of necessity relationship.

I’m not image-obsessed.

I’m a serial monogamist – I tend to dive in.

I joined a drama group when I was eight. It was the first time I’d made the connection with an audience.

I’m shocked at how much I can talk about myself.