MARNIE STERN

People assume I sell a lot more records than I actually do. I really don't sell any.

I know of dude-bands who've brought big, crazy dogs on tour. Everybody loves their animal.

I don't want to be seen as this math-rock geek.

For stage I try to dress down, because I want people to take me seriously.

I had been wanting to give guitar lessons to girls because I feel like women tend to use their voice as the starting point for a song and learn a few chords, and then it ends there because then they just use their voice to flesh out a song.

Mainstream to me equals boring, so I don't want to be doing that.

I was listening to a lot of math rock-y type bands do lots of complex stuff and I couldn't figure out how they were doing it. Then I realized that sometimes they were finger tapping, so I started messing around doing it.

Most of my playing style is very on point - the tapping, just by nature of being rhythmic, is tight - so I'd like to explore something looser and less precise.

Lightning Bolt and Hella are two bands I listen to, and there's a lot of finger tapping going on there.

Music is entirely subjective. I was thinking that for myself, for songwriting and what I like to listen to, to help motivate me as a songwriter, as a musician, there are certain things I lean towards and certain things I don't.

I really don't separate male from female ever with music, I really don't.

You like some things, you don't like others. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the others, it just means you have an opinion.

When I go on and listen to the stuff on the websites, I can't tell, it all sounds like the same band, like they should all be in one band together.

The reason I could last for that long a period of being up was because the piece accidentally caught the excitement and adrenaline from, "Ooh this sounds different from usual... Ooh I like that..." That was the energy that kept me up.

There are so many good guitarists out there, I am by no means a very good guitar player.

When you're a solo artist and you have a band on tour you have to pay the band some salary. You don't realise the expenses, the way they add up SO quickly. But thank god I'm not a money person. So it doesn't really bug me at all, I mean it's more comical to me.

Some people seem so different, some people feel so much more than other people, some people are able to push past things so much easier. And...it's just fascinating to me.

It seems to me, that's the only thing that ends up being really fulfilling or satisfying - your career.

I feel like people who are guarded and shut off, I feel like they should have to wear a button that says, "shut down", "guarded" or something.

I never go out, ever. And I think that's why I've been craving human connection so badly, and in a way, I'm excited to go on tour to be around people all the time.

Because music wasn't free yet, they wouldn't really offer MP3s so you had to buy things to see if you liked it or not. Which is crazy if you think about how much music you bought and then didn't even like the stuff. It was a different world where bands made money off their music.

The point of life for me is just to make connections with people and share experiences with people.

Labels want to capture a certain market of kids and blah blah blah, and it's true, I just never think about that stuff. It's all part of a chain that's moving along, but this phase of music has to switch.

I feel like people are actually just built differently, have different chemicals going on in their goddamn brain.

Nobody ever cares what I say! I feel badly about it, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.