Melody Gardot

It became a kind of a game, to remember the things that had happened five minutes ago. I would start making notes about the things I was doing, on an instrument that was foreign to me, the guitar, so it was just a fun way of doing cognitive therapy. I was none the wiser to it until I began to improve and my ability to speak began to come back.

Music activates the brain at a high level.

Music is the most fantastic drug there is!

The honest truth is that every day was new, every day was a challenge, every day was starting from a fresh place, and as time went on, over the course of about two years, things became better and better. But I don’t think that there was for me anything like, ‘Ah, this is taking too long’, because ‘long’ didn’t exist. So I see it as a blessing. I have to laugh. I mean there’s no other way to look at it.

I had an affinity for music and could play anything I heard on the piano, but I wasn’t scholastically advanced in any way. It was more of a habitual tendency. I would work on weekends at piano bars playing jazz when I was an art student, but the music wasn’t mine – it was covers: everything from Radiohead to really old jazz. But other than that, the only training I had was piano lessons from when I was nine until I was eleven.

Baby I’m a fool who thinks it’s cool to fall in love!

I would love to have kids someday; I actually can’t imagine not having them. My parents have been married for 36 years. They (Lance, a mover, and Sandy, a nurse) have a pretty honest, straightforward relationship that I hope to have myself. – On having her own kids somedayYou never really know the person you’re sleeping beside. You have a right to your secrets, but that’s very difficult when you’re supposed to be someone’s partner. – On marriage as a minefield of secrets, as suggested in Married Life

This is what I tell young women who ask me for career advice. People are going to try to trick you. To make you feel that you are in competition with one another. “You’re up for a promotion. If they go for a woman, it’ll be between you and Barbara.” Don’t be fooled. You’re not in competition with other women. You’re in competition with everyone.

I remember failing my Princeton interview. My mom wanted me to apply because ever since I was a kid she had this dream that I would apply to Princeton, but it was just not happening.

Because every person, no matter who you are-how tall you are, how short you are-some things work on you and some things don’t. I don’t like to wear things that feel like costumes. Whenever I work with a stylist, I always find myself saying the same thing: ‘I want my dress to say, I’m just here from New York.’ That’s why I always end up in black or brown. If I try to wear too much color, I feel like I’m pretending to be from Los Angeles and I’m not getting away with it.

When I was a kid, I’d be there in the stands thinking: ‘Come on Wolves, do it for me!’….And here I am again: ‘Come on Wolves,’ pleading with a borrowed laptop!

I was rapping as a hobby. It was something I did for my friends and just played around on ideas and stuff like that.

I don’t have anything that I treasure at all. They’re just things. I tend to buy an awful lot of stuff, like clothes and things. But I wouldn’t be bothered if my house burns down tomorrow.

[on Edward Cullen in ‘Twilight’] He’s a poet, and very deep and profound. He’s just extraordinarily troubled.

I’m a woman now.

You know, I was a school rebel. Whatever they said do, I didn’t do. I was totally anti-everything. I was a right bastard, a right hard nut. I just totally closed the doors to ever wanting to know what they had to teach me. Rock & roll was the only thing I wanted to get into.

A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he’s finished.

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend and dogs are a man’s best friend. Now you know which sex has more sense.

I’ve had tinnitus for about ten years, and since I started protecting my ears it hasn’t got any worse – touch wood.

[on Frank Sinatra] He was a compassionate guy. He loved to have fun. He had a movie theatre in his house. We munched on popcorn and watched movies together.

Paul is not someone trying to be Freddie. He’s someone trying to take this somewhere else… I’m very excited about working it all out.