Top 120 Quotes & Sayings by KT Tunstall - Page 2

I used to take it much more to heart. Now I realise that negativity has almost everything to do with the person delivering it and very little to do with you yourself.

Sales have never been a source of joy for me in terms of my music. It's really about who's turning up at your shows, what people are saying about it.

I really enjoy tech, but I'm not voracious - I'll find stuff because I want to use it, not because I'm interested in what's out there. It's a sort of necessity relationship.

My father had Parkinson's, though he actually died following a bicycle accident.

I guess if you make quality music then it has a longevity and it will find its place.

I believe that the Universe is like a single organism, and we are all little nerve endings feeding our experiences back into a whole.

I've got my roots in Northern Ireland - my biological father's side of the family were from Belfast.

I write songs, I play a guitar and that's it.

For me, success is being happy. I used to think it was lots of houses, lots of record sales, lots of stories to tell. But some massive life changes, getting a divorce and my dad dying, led to a huge period of reflection.

Getting to know myself changed everything. It's the best thing I've ever done.

When I tried to get a record deal, only one label wanted me. The rest said 'oh, we've already got a girl with a guitar.' Can you imagine them ever saying that to a guy?

The only regular exercise I do is playing my shows, which are basically two hours of aerobics.

I didn't find fame particularly difficult, partly because I'm proud to be able to say I'm the most unrecognisable face in pop.

I was very into tribal techno and used to go and really lose myself in great dance music.

It's a shame that when you've actually lived some life and have something to write about, they're saying you're too old to come out and play it.

Touring can get really hard if you're not hitting some fashionable zeitgeist.

Touring is such a major sacrifice, especially as you get older, to be away from friends and family and home and any sort of routine or home comforts.

I've never considered myself a locked-down straight person. I've had relationships with girls.

When you make an album, you have to decide how much you want to give away; you have to decide how much you want to open up. Because the more you open up the more rewarding it can be but the more dangerous it can be. If you really open up and it gets panned it's really painful.

I get so frustrated with all these so-called singer-songwriters coming out and they don't write!

My maternal grandmother was Cantonese, so I'm a quarter Chinese and half Irish and a quarter Scottish and raised by English parents living in Scotland.

It strikes me as very odd for someone to think, 'You know what, if I put on a bikini, I may shift some more records,' but it happens. If people are comfortable with that, fine, but it's not something that would ever cross my mind.

Criticism only hurts when there's some truth in it.

I know it sounds weird, but the kind of music I write isn't the kind of music that I listen to, which is quite underground, left-of-centre stuff like PJ Harvey and Tom Waits.

I'm shocked at how much I can talk about myself.

I can do the vocal acrobatics but I really try not to. I've always been drawn to singers who sing it like it is, pure, straight down the line: Ella Fitzgerald, Patti Smith, Carole King. Simplicity is really important to me.

I follow the Bulletproof diet - it is based on grass-fed steak, vegetables, no carbs and a lot of butter.

Basically, my mum and dad bought me a CD player for my 14th birthday. They didn't really listen to music at all, but my dad had a couple of tapes that he'd listen to, like Tom Lehrer. My dad was a physicist and Tom Lehrer was like this really weird Harvard class professor, who was really cool because he was also a satirist and pianist.

My father passing really, in many ways, was a gift: It made me look at my own happiness and sense of self and realize that I wasn't happy. I had checked all these boxes and achieved all this stuff that I thought made you happy. And I was miserable.

I often talk too much and don't listen enough.

I had a job for a year, working in a high-quality whiskey-and-wine shop.

When I was seventeen, I left Scotland to go to Kent, a well-to-do boarding school in Connecticut, where there was a contingent of really naughty kids.

Politics for me is when I feel a personal engagement between people: I don't trust politicians.

I can play piano, classical flute, guitar, bass and I'm OK on drums.

I have always been a great fan of albums that are cathartic and that you can listen to them together and you can relate to them as a group of people or as friends.

Like a lot of young people growing up in the middle of nowhere, I was desperate to leave my small town behind, but music reconnected me to my roots.

I joined a drama group when I was eight. It was the first time I'd made the connection with an audience.

KIN' is basically a kind of rite of passage, scars-and-all celebration of going through difficult things in your life and being better for it.

I'm a huge fan of The Chemical Brothers and the Ninja Tune label and a lot of the stuff that they put out like DJ Shadow but I think, out of all of them, Leftism really just excited my musical brain in terms of the way that they mixed real instruments with dance tracks.

Of course we all break and we all cry and stumble. It's whether you allow the negative experiences to define you or shape you and make you become who you are in the best possible way. You use them as tools.

It was blazing sunshine and I went on in a turquoise neck muff, glamorous dress and muddy boots and just had the best gig, really emotional. I've had emails from people saying that they cried. They promised it wasn't the drugs.

The annual output of carbon emissions is 25 billion tonnes and Global Cool's goal is to reduce it by one billion tonnes a year.

My songs examine and explore little specific emotions or situations or stories... They're kitchen table songs, like a conversation between me and one other person. It's almost like an alien has been sent to get emotional samples from human beings and put it all together on a record.

Caring about the environment has always been a big part of my life. When you grow up in a really beautiful place and you hear that it is jeopardised you want to do something.

Exciting underground stuff is easier to find with YouTube than it used to be. You don't have to go to the dive bar in the bad part of town to see a band you would never usually see. My personal experience with it, when I was looking for a new lead guitarist, I was able to stalk guitarists on Youtube. And instead of having a horribly embarrassing auditioning process, I could check out peoples' playing. In some ways, you go into a record shop and the selection is narrower than it used to be with pop ruling the roost, but if you look, there's so much more to be found.

It's lovely to get to say hello to people you've always admired from afar, but the fun really starts out front with people going commando whilst wearing daring mud suits.

If you have a problem at that level where there is hatred, prejudice, and anger, that has nothing to do with the other person. What is wrong with you that you are feeling that way? Look at yourself. Quite often it is their upbringing or their parent's problems. You got to get free. At some point you have to take responsibility for your actions.

One of the main reasons that I love doing what I do is because it's unpredictable and I don't know what's coming next. When you're creating work, it's up to you whether it's an exciting experience or not.

My heart knows me better than I know myself, so I'm gonna let it do all the talking.

It's very important to me, who I play with and the same about picking a crew of people.

Everybody Sails alone, but we can travel side by side

I've always enjoyed dancing and going clubbing. I've always been interested in electronic music. I would love more than anything to see my music mutate into something that would be played in clubs. For sure.

As long as we are graceful, appreciative lodgers, the earth remains healthy and wondrous.

Independent record stores are like a casino where you put down your money and you always win. How amazing to discover gems you didn't know about, to meet someone more passionate than you are, and to feel at home in a place you may never have been to before. I'm convinced they will never lose their place - Long may they rule.

I always love to see a Democratic party in America. I've heard people's reservations about the situation between choosing between Hillary and Trump. It just seems that you can't have this man in that position. It completely confounds me why anybody would want such a hateful person in charge. It doesn't make sense to me as a human being.

I grew up knowing I could have had a million different lives. It makes your life mysterious and your imagination go wild.

Regardless of any feedback. I love being a solo artist and having creative control. But it can be very nourishing and informative and flex very different creative muscles to work for someone else. You are essentially employed by the director. I love the challenge of that.

Support is really important to me. It's quite a responsibility when people are paying for tickets. I've spent ten years playing for free, now it's like, bloody hell people are spending a tenner and I want it to be a great show and I really don't subscribe to having a crap support band.

I am a huge fan of movies. It is my favorite thing during downtime. I get completely lost in films. I find them transformative, even one that seems light and popcorn. I get something profound with the right music played with what I am watching. If there is good cinematography and good acting you can find something that really stays with you. I really enjoy being part of that collaborative process. I like making something really big that will be seen in a theater by a lot of people. There is nothing like it.

I went down to London with the idea that I was going to do vocals over this crazy, crazy trip-hop digital beat. Within two or three months, I heard Hunky Dory by David Bowie and that changed me in one way, and I realized what I actually wanted was to have an E Street Band - individuals, not session musicians.