Perfume Genius Quotes

We try to write things that work on a variety of levels at the same time: A sleek exterior with a turbulent lyric.

My favorite pieces that I've written, either for St. Lucia or for myself, have always had a transporting quality to them, where they take you out of the moment and somewhere positive that feels nostalgic and happy but sad at the same time.

I've always been into super upbeat, cute, uplifting progressions, but at the same time, I'm also a very dark person. I really like both sides, and I feel like I'm always trying to find some middle ground with music or style or anything that I do.

You get to tell your story through your music if you choose to.

I really like jazz and soul, but I also love so many other types of music, and I didn't want to be afraid to blend and experiment.

I grew up with all different genres of music, and I want to include that in my production as well.

I've been able to carve my way out with lyrics and melodies.

I'm one of the lucky artists in Nashville that gets to - I know it sounds cliche - but just write from the heart.

My particular space has always been quite unique in popular music. I have a background in R&B and hard rock and straight pop, but I never went all the way with any of those genres.

Lyrics are no more important than the music. There's no point in forcing them on people.

'My Swan Song' - that song is so depressing but uplifting at the same time, you know what I mean?

As an artist, you've got to see the mess. That's what we do. We get a human being, and it's like putting together a puzzle. And the puzzle has got to be a mixture, a multifaceted mixture of human emotions, and not all of it is going to be pretty.

Imagination in a poet is a faculty so wild and lawless that, like a high ranging spaniel, it must have clogs tied to it, lest it outrun the judgment. The great easiness of blank verse renders the poet too luxuriant. He is tempted to say many things which might better be omitted, or, at least shut up in fewer words.

Vulnerability can be empowering as a songwriter and storyteller.

To think about love and passion and political correctness all together, it doesn't work. Art has to go way past the political to be effective.

Actors are like kids, they need to play a little bit. And that's the nature of their job, they need to shake off some energy and then you as the director get them back on track. When you do loosen up the reins, you get some amazing things, but you have to wring out the performances for every last good drop.

Jazz is an endless source of ideas, because you can use anything. You can play operatic arias. You can incorporate them into jazz. You can play gypsy music and incorporate it into jazz. You can European classical and you can incorporate it into jazz. You can use anything and jazz it up, as they used to say.

There's a freedom there and an understanding of my career and the things I've done. I'm seen here as primarily a comic actor, which is OK, but I can go to New York and I do something that's very emotional. It would be lovely at some point to do something like that on film.

If you go too far in fantasy and break the string of logic, and become nonsensical, someone will surely remind you of your dereliction....Pound for pound, fantasy makes a tougher opponent for the creative person.

One of the wonderful things about the actor's life is that's what we have the opportunity to do; we bring all these aspects of ourselves and of our personal lives into the work that we do.

You can't dance cheerfully. Dancing is too important. It can be wild or solemn or gay or lewd or art for art's sake, but it can't be cheerful.

You must reach inside yourselves where I live like a story, not old, not young laughing at my own sorrow, weeping pearls at weddings, wielding a torch to melt sand into something clear and bright.

Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.

Music was a thing of the soul — a rose-lipped shell that murmured of the eternal sea — a strange bird singing the songs of another shore.

I'm all for whatever it takes to get wherever you need to get with a character, as long as you don't wipe it on me.