When you're young is the one time when you get to indulge in being morose and take yourself most seriously.
— Mitski
I can't read in a car, because I'll get sick. It's almost instant.
I think it's very dangerous as an artist to be comfortable.
I tend to kind of try to use what's in my environment to the best of my ability rather than seek out things that I don't already have.
I discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S. I didn't identify as that before I came here. People started calling me that, and I started being treated in a specific way.
In my first few years of being in New York, I had a major identity crisis because I'd never stayed in one place for so long.
I actually love the summer. When I went to Miami on tour, I was actually like, 'I love this place.'
I remember I took a music course in junior year of high school, and some girl brought in 'Teardrops On My Guitar,' and she was like, 'Isn't this song great?' And everyone was like, 'Who's Taylor Swift?' And now, every time I listen to Taylor Swift, I remember that moment.
I would love for Rivers Cuomo to listen to my music and see what he thinks.
I think my real influences are out of my control, which are the things that entered my brain when I was a kid growing up.
Being an outsider at all times is both unhealthy and useful, because you become much more objective about things.
I've been asked whether I have a hobby, and have felt strangely offended that anyone would assume I have the time.
I'd always been fascinated by death, which sounds so morbid. Especially being a woman trying to make music, I think there's a sense that you're never young enough, or your career is going to end soon.
I think your ego gets in the way of making something good because it kind of blinds you from the actual art.
When you love someone and care about them, you want what's best for them, and it's always the hardest thing to realize maybe you aren't what's best for them, how hard you try.
I'm Japanese, and I'm also white American, and neither camp wants me in their camp.
I really like The Cars. They're just so over the top and super pop, but I don't feel guilty. I'm proud of all the music I listen to.
The whole 'grunge-girl' comparisons certainly are the easiest to pick out, and I appreciate that music journalists are rushed.
It's very tempting, when somebody says they like this about you, to want to do that over and over.
I've stopped wanting a home, I think, because I've been on tour all my life, basically.
I really just care about making music and how I can make it next.
Sometimes when I perform, and it's obvious the audience is just there to party, or if I feel a wall between me and the audience, I get existential about it.
Pop artists work really hard, and they might not work for the same things that indie artists do, but they're still musicians, and they're still making art.
I don't really listen to pop-country, but I like really, really old country that's closer to folk. Like Johnny Cash, who is considered country.
When you're an adult, things mellow out. I think when you're a teenager and you are sad and the world is ending, everything is about that one sadness.
When you are a minority, it's your job to bend, and when you love someone, you really want to make it work. Then you start to realise, 'Oh, I'm bending a lot,' and they're just standing there existing, and I'm bending around them. But you can't blame them: they don't realise it; that's just how they already existed. It's hard.
Whenever I've tried to ingratiate myself to an existing community, I tend to give too much, to become whatever it is they want me to be. It's something I do automatically - I've learnt to immediately adapt.
My personality's very obsessive-compulsive. I tend to fixate a lot.
I think it's our responsibility as artists to not only fight for our art but fight for the communities that are the reason we're able to continue making art, especially since, in Brooklyn's case, we as artists somehow made it 'cool' enough for the bigger money-making industries to start taking over.
I wanted to take up guitar because playing piano is a little harder. Carrying a keyboard around is harder, and finding a real piano is much harder, and I wanted to play live more, so I figured a guitar would be easier to carry around.
I was a film major because, for some reason, I thought that that was a creative job that had more job opportunities. I don't know what logic I was following, but that was my impression at the time.
I don't think I have the kind of creativity to write fiction.
You can be heartbroken about a relationship but also, from it, realize you are you, and you're okay with who you are or where you came from.
I guess you can say I 'do the Twist.' I like playful dance moves that aren't too serious.
If I have a song where I hit some really high notes, I want to try to bring in equivalently low notes somewhere in there.
I try to be regimented and try to stay healthy and work out and eat properly and go to sleep. And not get too caught up in the industry in my regular life, so I can save all my expression and energy for my art.
I was one of those girls people called 'intense.'
I think growing up the way I did has made me a lot more objective, and that's important in the process of writing and trying to look at subjective matter that way.
I couldn't wait to get out of school, but once I did, I didn't actually know what I wanted to do with myself. I don't really know how it happened, but I just started writing music and realized that's what I wanted to do.
I'm punk, but I love gold.
I hate that my opinions are gonna be on record... that my opinions of other artists are going to be on record.
All I want to do at karaoke is sing Mariah Carey.
My father was obsessed with folk music from around the world, and I think the countless artists who performed them are my biggest influences.
Often I've had problems automatically bending to a lover's will, becoming what I know they want me to be. Immediately, I learn all the music they love, listen to it, study it, instead of being like, 'This is what I love!'
Oftentimes, the most important decisions I make are the ones I don't put much thought into.
With solo shows, you have complete control over the set list. If you feel like you want to do something different or do a new song, you can just work it in. You can talk to the audience or not talk to the audience. There's nothing that's set.
It would actually feel forced or unnatural to try to do a different singing style or to try to change my sound completely.
I don't want to be elitist.
I think music is supposed to be shared.
You always want what you can't have, and that all-American thing, from the day I was born, I could never enter that dream. That all-American white culture is something that is inherited instead of attained.
