Beth Gibbons Quotes

I try to imagine how we would live if we didn`t know we were going to die. Would we live our lives differently? Less careful, maybe? Less scared? These are beautiful things to think about and build a song around.

I`ve just put my heart and soul in a song and need at least a week to recover.

You feel the music needs something but you don`t know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that`s frustrating, especially if you don`t come up with something for three days.

I`ve had a wordless phase, and that`s still not entirely over: what I sing is not always literally meant that way, and you can hear that in the way it is sung.

Most of the lyrics are over a year old, and it doesn`t feel like it`s about me. Time created a distance.

The music comes first. When Geoff has made something the inspiration comes automatically. His music is very expressive. But still is is a very difficult process: I have to add something to his music, not push it away. It has to be equal, and I find that very difficult.

I still don`t like doing interviews. I hardly do any... I hope this will be the last one for a long while.

We`re thinking about printing the lyrics with the next record so that people can find their own meaning in them. But then they would start having a life of their own, and I think the Portishead music should stay a whole in which the lyrics come second, actually.

Let`s get one thing straight: there`s no such thing as the Bristol sound.

There`s not only emotion in the way you sing but also in what you sing. That way I can compensate it.

I think that after a year of Portishead I`ve become a little more sober.

I thought I had a clear picture of death, but now I know it`s a mystery and it will always be a mystery, although it is something we all have in common: everybody knows that life ends with death.

I am a very sensitive person, very impulsive and emotional.