I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs.

We just kind of lost our way. But we were looking to be free. One day we'll float. Take life as it comes.

If I ever meet a writer or a painter, I don't presuppose that they are like the work they are presenting.

I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do, then I'm myself, and if I don't, then I give nothing.

I feel like "Not For Long" was one for me just because I got to work with two people that I looked up to...

I don't loathe interviews, I'm just one of those people who makes music because I find it difficult to talk.

It [ "Not For Long"] was the biggest song that I've had, and I actually heard it on the radio multiple times.

Some people, like Leonard Cohen, write one album every 10 years, and labor over a song for five years at a time.

What we are fed through the media I do not accept, unless you see it with your own eyes you cant trust anything.

I think of myself as a songwriter, a weaver of story and imagination in a way that a novelist might write a book.

When I'm writing for rappers it's kinda like switching, "Okay, you're not PJ. Now you have to act like a rapper."

Yeah, I mean I am somebody that makes an effort to go and see a lot of exhibitions, painting, drawing, sculpture.

I feel like when I'm writing for other people, when I'm doing rap hooks, it's kinda like playing dress up for me...

The artists that I love- whether painters or filmmakers- it's because something resonates in me because I've felt it.

I long ago learned that you can't expect people to interpret the songs in the way they had meant for you, as the writer.

You know, two people can say exactly the same words, saying the same story, and it would mean something entirely different.

Most of the stuff that I do talk about, about being counted out and being an underdog, 'cause that's what I feel like I am.

I try to see as much dance, theatre and films as I can because all of it feeds me in a way that I need feeding for what I do.

It varies, I don't think there is any one set way of writing songs or coming up with ideas, it comes in so many ways you know.

I think a lot of people have an idealistic view - if you grow up in the country, there can't possibly be anything wrong with you.

I grab an instrument to make my body a song, but I'm not a player as such, maybe a little more on guitar, but certainly not piano.

I think I'm a maker of songs, and songs are like films or a picture: You put them over there, and they have nothing to do with you.

At this point in my life, I'm probably not gonna be able to stop writing because it's gonna help me be able to do what I need to do.

I get to a point when I've collected together enough words that seem like they want to be songs rather than poems, or sometimes not.

I feel like it's very important that I'm doing what I'm doing, and I want to keep honoring that and try and do it as honestly as I can.

I think blues music is music of the soul. Of course, there are other forms. You could call some classical music blues music in that way.

The way I make music is unique to myself and the way I have lived my life - no one else would tell that story in the same way that I do.

To think of myself as a role model is extremely flattering, but I could never accept that, because Im just learning like everybody else.

Being a recording artist and having thousands of people listening to your music and singing your songs, and paying for it? It feels great!

But even when I do give interviews, I always come across as such a completely different person. It seems like there's no controlling it anyway.

I'm a visual artist myself and always have been so it's very natural for me to be very concerned with presentation, whether it's artwork or onstage.

I think that most art is asking a question or is looking for something, looking for answers and that is what life seems to be about for most people.

I never feel that I have to adopt a character. It's more the way I choose to present the music and that's always based on what is right for the song.

I've been so used to being supported by musicians, and I don't class myself as a particularly adept musician on instruments. I think I'm a songwriter.

There's so much you can do with laying words on a bed of music. You can completely change their meaning with the type of music or the way they're sung.

I just love having no clothes on outside, and the only time to do that is when the sun's shining. It's a wonderful sensation to not have any clothes on.

I find it hard myself to feel justified to sing in a very politically direct way about war or social conditions because I feel so ignorant of a lot of it.

There is a thread connecting you no matter how far away you are from someone and you know I have two or three relationships in my life that are like that.

I do write a lot of prose. It's not disciplined enough yet that it's actually become stories, or short stories. The idea of writing a novel seems impossible.

I think it does surprise me a bit when people have a very fixed idea of what I'm like, based upon the work that I do, which is something that is very separate.

As I grew older, I actually was prepared to go into fine arts school and do a degree. That was what I was actually settled upon when I was offered a record deal.

You shouldn't separate the piece from the way it's intended. I always feel like words shouldn't be unraveled from the music. They're all linked so much together.

Like I have to pretend like I'm a male rapper, that I got stacks and we're in the club, and what do I want to say. And then, when writing Rare I could just be PJ.

There's a level of discipline I use as a writer, designed to get better at what I'm doing, that requires quite a lot of study and quite a lot of hard work as well.

I think that's always very valuable: to keep the mind open to receiving all sorts of information, which can then be used in my work, but also just as a human being.

I also like a lot of silence, and when you're touring, it's constantly noise, all the time, you're surrounded with 15 or 20 people the entire time. I find that tough.

My father is actually a quarry man - he deals in stone. He also at one point had a lot of sheep, he owned a sheep farm, but primarily the family business was in stone.

I've so much left to explore, it's enormously exciting to me. It's a passion. I just try and get better at what I do, and I study it very hard, like it is my life degree.

I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. I have to work really hard at it to try and say the things I'm concerned with.

What Rare [albom] allows me to do is gonna show people other things that I'm capable of 'cause they really haven't heard a lot of things outside of the rap stuff that I do.

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