I'm trying to show everybody that I'm a girl, and I'm five foot four, and you can do anything you want, no matter your gender. It's your world, too!
— Billie Eilish
I think it's really cool when artists have song titles or album names that are a really conversational sentence.
I've always liked being busy. If I have nothing to do for a week, it just makes me mad.
People are terrified of me, and I want them to be.
I really like hip-hop and rap; that's my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.
I feel like I might be a designer or stylist - or a director because I have always been super interested in cameras and editing.
I always wear the kind of stuff that makes you overheat and die.
I'm gonna make what I want to make, and other people are gonna like what they're gonna like. It doesn't really matter.
I hate the idea of genres.
I'm pretty sure I don't have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They're all either about, like, 'I hate you,' or 'You make me hate me.'
It's really fun to put yourself into a character - into shoes you wouldn't normally be in.
If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I'll die someday, and one day, they will too.
I'm not going to say I'm cool, because I don't really feel that. I just don't care at all, and I guess that's what people think is cool.
I used to write random little stupid things when I was five, but then the first song I really wrote was one called 'Fingers Crossed,' which is on SoundCloud.
Lyrics are so important, but they're really underrated.
People have so much going on in their heads. I'm like, If you could write a song, you'd feel so much better!
I listen to music all day every day. I can't not listen to music. It's kind of scary how much I listen to music, but it's what I love, and it's all I care about, so I'm good with it.
I grew up on the Beatles; I love Linkin Park and Green Day. I heard hip-hop for the first time at 11 and realized what I was missing.
Getting recognized is insane. It just blows my mind. Like, someone who you don't know at all can just be like, 'Oh my God - are you Billie?'
When I do have free time, I spend it with friends, or I spend it at home writing or making something.
What inspires me about rap is that it's written in an almost poetic way. I just think it's so cool.
People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It's a story.
I wrote my first song at 12 and remember someone asking, 'What were you going through at 12 that you could write about?' I get what you're saying, but 11, 12, 13 were the hardest years of my life. You learn everything. You learn how horrible things feel.
If I'm inspired to make a certain kind of song, I'm going to make that kind of song, no matter if it's what they know me as or think I am.
If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you're sort of writing the same song over and over again.
Sometimes it's flattering when people copy you, but sometimes it gets to a breaking point.
Writing music is just like writing a book.
Sexism is everywhere, bro. I don't know if it's ever not somewhere.
Being an artist doesn't just mean you have a song. That doesn't make you an artist. The word 'artist' means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists - Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West - are doing the most.
I'm super self-critical, which I think is good, because then I get exactly what I want. I'm critical of other people, too - I try not to be, though.
When I was four, I wrote a song about falling into a black hole.
My brother had written 'Ocean Eyes,' and we recorded it, basing all of the production around contemporary and lyrical dance. I think of most songs that way - if you can't dance to a song, it's not a song.
What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don't really think that hard.
I love people talking about me; I love anybody just looking at me.
I just really want to get music out and tour and go places I've never been, and just do more videos. I love photography and videography, and so I really want to direct videos when I can.
I love to watch videos, and I've always liked to film and take pictures. I have an eye for really weird things that nobody thinks about. I used to make little movies about myself and then edit them on iMovie.
I've been in the Los Angeles Children's Chorus since I was 8.
I don't see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear 'pop,' you're like, 'Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,' and I feel like, 'Uh-uh. That's not me.'
I used to make little movies when I was younger. I'd make my friends be in them and then edit them.
I really wanted to be a model when I was little. I loved photography, and I loved being on camera. But I was short and chubby, so I couldn't. Anyway, being an artist is way more interesting than just being a model because it's about you and what you want to be. You're not being treated like a clothes hanger.
If it's good music, it's good music.
I don't think a song should be put in a category.
Nothing really scares me, to be honest.
My whole life, I've sung and listened to music, and since the beginning, I've had iTunes and used Apple Music for streaming.
I felt like, for so many years - and I still even feel it - as a girl, you can't really expect to go on stage and dress like a boy and jump around and scream with the audience and mosh and stuff, and every time that happens, I feel really proud.
I don't even call them fans. I don't like that. They're literally just a part of my life; they're a part of my family. I don't think of them as on a lower level than me. I don't think I'm anything but equal to all of them. So yeah, they're basically all of my siblings.
Some artists just ruin their voices because they don't know any better.
I love movement. I love moshing.
Pirate was going to be my middle name, but then my uncle had a problem with it because pirates are bad.
I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is - I don't even want to say that it's mine, because it's yours.
