I think my whole identity is formed around not knowing where I'm from. It might even be that I find comfort in that confusion.
— Mitski
I don't think 'bleak' is a bad thing.
On tour, I don't drink, because I don't think in any other job you are supposed to get to work and drink whisky.
Honestly, in the music business, it's all about being cool or being the newest thing or being the 'It' person, and I've tried really hard to be what is expected of me or what would be advantageous to my career, and I just reached the point where I said, 'No, I'm an emotional loser. I can't pretend to not care.'
I know for a fact that I'm problematic. I shouldn't be looked to for any kind of guidance.
Maybe this is a made-up belief to preserve myself, but I do believe that everyone has a purpose, and my purpose is to put out music that means something.
I have my privileges, but I do feel like at every turn there is such resistance. Things seem to take so much longer for me to do. I have to say things 10 times instead of once. I have to knock on 10 different doors instead of two. For everything. All the time. I feel like I'm not taken seriously.
I think the pressure gets to me when I play shows and there's more people in the audience than I'm used to.
I've been very careful to always make clear that I am a real person. That's why I'm on social media a lot.
I lived abroad most of my life in insular international communities.
I think people don't realize how little of being an artist is making art.
If I ever found a place where I belonged, that in itself would be an identity crisis to me.
A lot of musicians talk about how they were into music from the start; they always wanted to be musicians. It wasn't like that for me. I didn't think of it as a job or a career - it was just something that was constant.
Everything is so chaotic and messy in the world, and I have always felt kind of dirty.
When I started making music, I was like, 'This is something I can believe I was meant to do.'
I'm not an innovator.
Miyazaki movies were what I was raised on. I've watched them since I was very young, and I've been greatly shaped by them.
I hope to be a writer and musician my whole life, fingers crossed.
I have this thing about being acknowledged and accepted by institutions.
When you're doing something you're not used to, you kind of realize that you're still a kid: even though the whole world around you sees you as an adult and you're expected to act like an adult, you still haven't actually grown up.
What's important to me is that my songs can exist without any material anything. It's very reflective of my ideology.
It's nice to know there's a big world with many perspectives. I tend to get so stuck in my own small world easily, and going out into the world reminds me that I'm not the center of the world - in a good way.
On tour, people know that if they ever ask me what I want to eat, I will always say Asian food. I'm becoming a stereotype, but it's what I want to eat. I want to eat rice.
When I record, it's this very precious and insular thing.
I understand that, because there are so many musicians, you have to make artists into brands, but I sometimes feel like I have to be some kind of non-human icon in order for people to listen to my music.
I don't set out to write something. I more just write, and later on, I discover what it's about.
I think what's hard for me is not that I don't get downtime to chill, it's that I don't get time to make music.
I took a few piano lessons as a kid, but it didn't last; I just learned piano from doing it over and over on my own, because I didn't have many friends, and there was always a keyboard in the house.
I don't think I'm alone in this: I'm obsessed with trying to not only be happy but maintain happiness, but my definition of happiness is skewed more towards ecstasy rather than contentment.
Music was the one thing that was just mine, and no one could take it from me. I created it, dictated it, and it made me not able to let go of it.
Being an outsider makes you a really good writer.
On one hand, I think it's very important to talk about race and talk about gender, because if it's not talked about, then we won't progress. What I have a problem with is when it becomes another form of tokenization, of shrinking me into a symbol instead of a multilayered, female Asian artist.
When someone is a musician - trying to make a living off being a public figure - it's really easy for people to see me as a face on a screen that doesn't have a personal life.
As a woman of color, I always have to be at 150 percent and better than everybody in the room to be considered competent.
There's this myth that women are supposed to compete with each other or something, or we're supposed to hate each other, and that's totally not productive.
I have a very conveniently photographic memory of emotions - it's overwhelming, because things don't fade for me.
I feel like I've always wanted to live in one place and stay in one place, but I always end up choosing things that make me travel.
Tour isn't good for writing, but it's good for inspiration.
I don't want to be a musician's musician. I want to be an everyone's musician.
I'm so smart. I am good at doing math really quickly in my head.
I always have strong urges to sabotage myself. Whenever someone says they like something about my music, I tend to not want to do that anymore. It's not even that I don't like it anymore: it's that I keep trying to find ways for people to dislike me.
I didn't fit in anywhere when I grew up, but I was always American, so to survive, I created this 'ideal America.' Finally I came to the U.S. and realised, 'Oh, I don't belong here, either.'
You can never learn enough about music.
When I go onstage and am performing the way I want to... I finally feel like myself.
Growing up, I never really felt like anything was my own. I moved a lot, and I never belonged anywhere.
I don't care about making anything new. I make music to express an emotion, and if the emotion is nostalgic, so be it.
