I think it’s not just important to have an active imagination, but a unique one. Far too often, you find those with remarkable creativity vetting it through cliche, established outlets. And that bothers me. To me, that feels like laziness on the part of one’s imagination. Why play in the box, when you could create a shape that doesn’t even exist yet? Creation isn’t about coloring within the lines.”
That’s one of the things I respect most about Bjork Guðmundsdóttir — throughout her entire career, she has been creating a new landscape to work in, rather than settling for the prescribed singer-songwriter course. Whether it is creating an album with only voice-instruments, or starring in a movie-musical, or making 3-D short films about mythical buffalo-creatures, you know that Bjork has no concept of the box. She threw it away along with any and all instructions ages ago, and the results have been wonderful.
Quotes:
“Compared to America or Europe, God isn’t a big part of our lives here [Iceland]. I don’t know anyone here who goes to church when he’s had a rough divorce or is going through depression. We go out into nature instead.”
“Football is a fertility festival. Eleven sperm trying to get into the egg. I feel sorry for the goalkeeper.”
“For a person as obsessed with music as I am, I always hear a song in the back of my head, all the time, and that usually is my own tune. I’ve done that all my life.”
“I find it very difficult to draw a line between what’s sex and what isn’t. It can be very, very sexy to drive a car, and completely unsexy to flirt with someone at a bar.”
“I get obsessed by little nerdy things in my corner that no one else is interested in.”
“I love being a very personal singer-songwriter, but I also like being a scientist or explorer.”
“I sometimes fall into the trap of doing what I think I should be doing rather than what I want to be doing.”
“It seems that most the world is driven by the eye, right? They design cities to look great but they always sound horrible, … They design telephones to look great, but they sound horrible. I think it was about time that the other senses were celebrated.”
“It’s incredible how nature sets females up to take care of people, and yet it is tricky for them to take care of themselves.”
“Everyone is bisexual’: “I’ve always had as many powerful, creative ladies in my life as I have men, and you could probably describe some of those relationships as romantic. I think everyone’s bisexual to some degree or another; it’s just a question of whether or not you choose to recognise it and embrace it. Personally, I think choosing between men and women is like choosing between cake and ice cream. You’d be daft not to try both when there are so many different flavours.”
“Usually when you see females in movies, they feel like they have these metallic structures around them, they are caged in by male energy.”
“Nature is our chapel.”
“I am a grateful… grapefruit.”
If you enjoy reading about Bjork, you may also enjoy:




