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I Never Wanted To Grow A Thicker Skin; I Felt A Real Sense Of Pride In My Thin Skin, And In A Weird Way, I Still Do, Because It's My Thin Skin That Allows Me To Empathize With Other People. It's The Thing That Allows Me To Create Vulnerable Art. It's The Thing That Allows Me To Create Other Feelings And Make Songs That Actually Grab People And Touch People. I Feel Like I've Spent My Life Fighting That Thicker Skin Because I Don't Want To Become An Embittered Asshole.

-Amanda Palmer

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I Never Wanted To

Amanda Palmer

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I Never Wanted To Grow A Thicker Skin; I Felt A Real Sense Of Pride In My Thin Skin, And In A Weird Way, I Still Do, Because It's My Thin Skin That Allows Me To Empathize With Other People. It's The Thing That Allows Me To Create Vulnerable Art. It's The Thing That Allows Me To Create Other Feelings And Make Songs That Actually Grab People And Touch People. I Feel Like I've Spent My Life Fighting That Thicker Skin Because I Don't Want To Become An Embittered Asshole.

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The Challenge Is To Just Focus On What's Actually Happening, Focus On The People Who Get It, And Focus On The People Who Are Listening.

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In Other Words, Let's Give Our Young Women The Right Weapons To Fight With As They Charge Naked Into Battle, Instead Of Ordering Them To Get Back In The House And Put Some Goddamn Clothes On.

All Of My Music, My Stage Show, My Personality, My Blog, My Twitter Feed, Anything That's Made Me Me, And A Huge Part Of Why People Like And Respect Me, Is That I Just Don't Spend Much Energy On That Other Stuff. It's Not Worth It. It's A Losing Battle Too. You're Just Screwed The Minute You Engage.

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I Think People Have Been Obsessed With The Wrong Question, Which Is How Do We Make People Pay For Music? What If We Started Asking, How Do We Let People Pay For Music?

Crowdfunding As An Idea Itself Isn't New - Bands Have Been Doing It Since The Dawn Of Time.

There's Nothing More Threatening Than A Powerful Woman, And There's Nothing More Threatening To The Current Order Of Things Than Women Powerfully Owning Their Own Narrative. It's So Threatening To People, To Women As Well, And It's Threatening The Order Of Things.

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There’s No “correct Path” To Becoming A Real Artist. You Might Think You’ll Gain Legitimacy By Going To University, Getting Published, Getting Signed To A Record Label. But It’s All Bullshit, And It’s All In Your Head. You’re An Artist When You Say You Are. And You’re A Good Artist When You Make Somebody Else Experience Or Feel Something Deep Or Unexpected.

I Am Bigger On The Inside But You Have To Come Inside To See Me

When You Connect With People, They Want To Help You.

I Suppose I'm Happy To Sell My Time And Energy, But I'm Not Happy To Sell My Initial Creative Time.

I Had Very Literal Parents And I Wanted To Survive With Metaphor And Art, And There Was A Real Sense Of Shame Around It.

Nobody Ever Sees Me. Thank You.

If We Can Repair Things Emotionally, A Lot Of Other Things Would Follow.

I Still Get Laughed At But It Doesn't Bother Me, I'm Just So Glad To Hear Laughter Around Me.

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We Can Only Connect The Dots We Collect, Which Makes Everything You Write About You... Your Connections Are The Thread That You Weave Into The Cloth That Becomes The Story That Only You Can Tell.

There's Really No Honor In Proving That You Can Carry The Entire Load On Your Own Shoulders. Andit's Lonely.

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Worst Case Scenario

I Remember Being A Teenager And Being Really Impressed By "let's Sit Around And B*tch" People, And I Have So Little Time For Those People Nowadays.

I Think A Good Role Model Has To Be Sexy. Real, Empowered, Self-possessed Women Are Sexy. When You're Really In Control Of Your Choices, Your Mood, Your Body, And Your Opinions, People Find You Sexy.

I've Always Felt Like An Outsider Across The Board, Since Day One. The Challenge Has Been To Simply Not Pay Attention To My Outsider Or Insider Status And Just Do The Work And Play The Shows And Connect With The People. And Not Even Bother To Play This Game Of Keeping Score, Which Is What Destroys You.

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For Most Of Human History, Musicians, Artists, They've Been Part Of The Community — Connectors And Openers, Not Untouchable Stars.

Nothing Is Crueller Than Children Who Come From Good Homes.

I Kind Of Rely On My Artist Friends To Make My Physical Music Worth Buying By Having Them All Come Together And Create Beautiful Artwork That Everyone Is Gonna Want To Own To Support My Record.

Our Nature Is To Desperately Want To Believe And To Take What We Believe Is The Quickest Path There Even Against Our Better Judgment.

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The Perfect Tools Aren't Going To Help Us If We Can't Face Each Other And Give And Receive Fearlessly, But More Important, To Ask Without Shame.

I'm A Massive Fan Of David Lynch And 'twin Peaks.'

There's Something Advantageous About Being A Woman In Rock Versus, Say, A Woman In Chemistry Or Construction. There's Definitely A Built-in Sexism Across The Board, But I Think You're Afforded A Degree Of Freedom In Rock Because, Historically, The Rules Have Been Flexible.

Thank God My Best Friend's A Therapist.

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Political Opinions

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How Do We Let People Pay For Music?

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Pyramid Schemes

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Asking For Help

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When You're Afraid Of Someone's Judgment, You Can't Connect With Them. You're Too Preoccupied With The Task Of Impressing Them.

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I Think Performance Art Comes From A Simple Place Of Wanting To Express Things Beyond Just Sound.

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On Many Days, Harder Than The Act Of Making The Art Itself Is The Act Of Sharing It And Living In A Culture That You Know Is Built To Tear You Down.

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One Thing About Being A Performer Is You're Not Just Doing An Intellectual Job Behind A Desk; You're Out There Performing And Being Looked At, Being Assessed For Really Superficial Stuff.

I Feel Like If I Were To Play The Game Completely And Just Get Myself In A Giant Bottle Of Nail Polish And Put Myself On Display, I Would Feel Like I Had Somehow Cosmically Lost. I Feel Like I'm Taking A Bunch Of The Ingredients And Using Some Of Them But Not All Of Them And Shuffling Around And Making People Think I'm Doing My Job.

I Have Never In My Career Embarked On A Journey Towards Controversy. I Have Never Deliberately Set A Flame.

If You Love People Enough, They Will Give You Everything.

There's A Huge Cloud Of Shame Around Art And Business Being Seen As Bedfellows.

Take On The Pain And Wear It As A Shirt.

Life As It Should Be: All Friends, All Art, All Music, All Love, All The Time.

I Do What I Want. I Try To Be Nice To Everybody. When I Fail, I Try To Apologize.

One Of The Best Things About Kickstarter And Crowdfunding And The Collapse Of The Music Business Is A Lot Of Artists Like Me Have Been Forced To Face Our Own Weird Mess About Ourselves And What We Thought It Meant To Become Musicians.

I Nurture My Close Relationships Like Priceless Lamps. That's Part Of Why The Job Itself Is Inherently Difficult And Kind Of A Paradox, Because You're Out There Touring And Traveling And Going A Million Miles A Minute, But The Things That Are Keeping You Steady And Stable Can Be Really Hard To Nurture When You're Going Fast, And Your Relationships, Which Are The Number One Thing That Help Me Through.

I Don't Try To Make Anybody Outside Happy.

The Key Is To Just Focus On The Spots Where The Love Is Real, Because You Can Just Drive Yourself Crazy Focusing On The Negativity, Focusing On The Relationships That Are Irreparable And Just Aren't Going To Work, Trying To Convince The Haters That You Are Indeed Lovable. So Much Of That Is Wasted Energy.

There's A Fundamental Disconnection In Society In The Way We Live, This Way We Live That We Take So For Granted, And We've Become Very Separate From One Another And We Don't Really Take Lot Of Time To Realize That. And The Math Is Overwhelming To The Point Of Despair, But The Answers Could Be So Simple.

If Your Writing Is Good, If It Resonates, If It Connects The Dots For Anybody Out There, The Lovers Will Come, The Haters Will Come, Support Will Come — Sometimes In The Form Of Money, Sometimes In The Form Of Something Less Expected — And It Balances.

You Tour And You Work Hard And You Take Care Of Your Fans And Very Real Things Lead To Other Real Things. There's Never Been Some Fantastic Fluke Or Break In My Career, It Has All Been Very Slow And Steady.

The Pattern's Laid Out On The Bed With Dozens Of Colors Of Thread But You've Got The Needle I Guess That's The Point In The End

It’s Not Easy To Ask… Asking Makes You Vulnerable.

Twitter Fascinates Me Because It's Real. It Feels Kind Of Unreal, But It Makes Very Real Things Happen.

I Want To Be Happy. I Want To Make People Happy. I Do Not Need To Be Rich To Do That.

When I Find Myself Having To Share A Meal With Someone Who Simply Wants To Complain About The World, I Almost Feel Myself Wanting To Crawl Out Of My Skin And Just Sort Of Scurry Away. But Being Able To Pick Up On That Stuff And Being Able To Easily Identify The People Walking Towards The Light Instead Of Walking Towards The Darkness, That's A Skill I'm Very, Very Glad To See Growing In Myself.

I Feel Like I've Gotten To The Point In My Career And In My Life Where I Can Allow Myself To Write Whatever Comes Into My Head And Not Judge It Too Harshly.

Meditation, Especially For People Who Dont Know Very Much About It And Think Its This Very Hippy Dippy Thing, Can Really Be Powerful, Terrifying Even, As It Lifts The Rug Up On Your Subconscious And The Dust Comes Flying Out.

It Feels Like It Is A Daily Work And An Ongoing Task To Undo All Of The F - - G Programming That I Have Had All My Life About Who I Am Supposed To Be And How I'm Supposed To Look And That I'm Supposed To Win. It's A Daily Deconstruction Of All That Bullshit.

If You Want The World To Pay For Projects, You Have To Be Able To Display Why You're Worthy.

If I Were A Guy, It Would Be, You Know, Just A Different Set Of Problems I Have To Carry Along.

If You're Going To Make Work And You're Going To Write And You're Going To Put Yourself Out There And Perform, You Will Be Belittled, You Will Be Insulted, You Will Be Called A Standard Collection Of Names, You Will Be Accused, And You Just Have To Stand There And Continue To Work And Find A Way To Not Let Those Things Poison You.

How You Sound. How You Look. Are You Fat? Those Are Things That Could Be Really Irritating.

I Get So Many Ideas For Songs, But I'm So Seldom Disciplined Enough To Sit Down And Crank Them Out.

Comparing Yourself To The People Like You, Comparing Yourself To The People Who Aren't Like You, Looking At How Many Records You've Sold, Looking At The Venue Size You're Selling Out. None Of That Can Even Remotely Measure How Happy You Are.

In Both The Art And The Business Worlds, The Difference Between The Amateurs And The Professionals Is Simple: The Professionals Know They're Winging It. The Amateurs Pretend They're Not.

Every Album Is Just A Greatest Hits Of Whatever Songs Are On A Pile When I Go In To Make A Record.

When We Really See Each Other, We Want To Help Each Other.

Helping Each Other

When You Trust People To Help You, They Often Do.

I Think Being A Woman In Any Business That's Dominated By Men, You Have Your Garden Variety Pros And Cons, Where You Learn How To Focus And Harness Your Various Powers And Weaknesses For Better Or For Good.

I Make The Music That I Want To Make And Make The Show That I Want To Make. If You Like It, You Come. If You Don't Like It, You Don't Have To.

Bands Like Nirvana Had Theatrical Sensibilities, Playing With Image, Challenging Assumptions People Were Making About Them, The Apex Being Kurt Cobain In A Dress To Make A Point.

The Stage Show Is, In Some Sense, Highly Theatrical. It's Definitely Not Just A Band In Jeans Playing Rock And Roll.

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