Suzanne Vega Writing Quotations

Writing in other voices is almost Japanese in the sense that theres a certain formality there which allows me to sidestep the embarrassment of directly expressing to complete strangers the most intimate details of my life.

A lot of my writing is not terribly civilized.

Of course, sometimes when you write personally, you are also writing about society, obliquely reflecting topical issues, but not in a way that people would expect you to or in the way that someone trying to make a point would.

But I never want to get to the point where I write a safe song or one that represents my sense of a subject in order to appear civilized.

It's striking how commercially viable that impulse for instant intimacy is right now, especially in songs and writing.

A lot of my writing is not terribly civilized. Sometimes I listen to songs by very smart writers who assume that the world is a civil place with certain formalities that people follow, but I don't see things that way. My own experience tells me that life is not like that. That's why I write the way I do.

I like to write about things that are extreme in some form. I like to write about something I feel I have to write about.

Writing is always personal in some way but not always in a direct way.