Obviously I've had this fascination with aristocracy my whole life. Like, the kings and queens of 500 years ago... they're like rock stars. If there was a 'TMZ' 500 years ago, it would be about, like, Henry VIII and Marie Antoinette and all those people.

Lorde

My dad is a civil engineer, and my mom is a stay-at-home mom. The fact that my parents weren't really involved in music was kind of good, because it meant that I had something that was private and personal.

Lorde

My advice to young people wanting to make music and to be in this industry is to really spend your time making music. Make so much music you have no friends. Make music. Figure out what it is you love, and... because if you're making cool art, then everything else will fall into line.

Lorde

I get paralyzingly nervous a lot of times, so I tried bravado. The way I dress and carry myself, a lot of people find it intimidating. I think my whole career can be boiled down to the one word I always say in meetings: 'strength.'

Lorde

I read a lot of short fiction, like Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Carver and Wells Tower.

Lorde

Grace Jones was an influence, because I was like, 'These shoulders! These pants! Girls can wear pants and be awesome.' That's something I definitely embody.

Lorde

I come from a big, loud family, and I'm the quieter one. Performing is something I have to switch on. I've heard I get real sassy onstage, which I'm not in real life! It's fun to be that person for an hour a night.

Lorde

My name is Ella; that's who I am at school, hanging out with friends, while I'm doing homework. But when I'm up on stage, 'Lorde' is a character.

Lorde

Coming from New Zealand, all the music I listen to is not made by New Zealanders. People never come to New Zealand to play a show because it's in the middle of nowhere.

Lorde

I am really into how words sound out loud, so I was always the kid who would, like, read the page of the book to herself in her room over and over and over. And Raymond Carver is great for that. Tobias Wolff is an author who is really good for that as well.

Lorde

With pop music and pop musicians, you know everything about everyone all the time, particularly their physical appearance. With female musicians, that's made a big thing of, and I think people, certainly with me, have appreciated a bit of mystery.

Lorde

I find a lot of feminist reading quite confusing and that often there's a set of rules, and people will be like, 'Oh, this person isn't a true feminist because they don't embody this one thing,' and I don't know, often it can be a gray area, and it can be a hard thing to navigate.

Lorde

I curate my life in a way. It's always playing on my mind, kind of a love-hate relationship. I'm not one of those people who's, like, 'I wish Facebook wasn't around,' because, you know, it is what it is.

Lorde

I've always been fascinated with aristocracy. I'm really interested in the Ivy Leagues, the final clubs, all the really old-money families, the concept of old money.

Lorde

When I was trying to come up with a stage name, I thought 'Lord' was super rad, but really masculine - ever since I was a little kid, I have been really into royals and aristocracy. So to make Lord more feminine, I just put an 'e' on the end! Some people think it's religious, but it's not.

Lorde

I love thrift shopping. You can get ten things because everything costs, like, three dollars.

Lorde

I think it would be impossible not to be an Internet kid, coming from New Zealand, because culturally it's a little barren.

Lorde

I'm usually really drawn to a song, and I know it would be good to cover if it sounds like something that I could write, or I wished I could write. Sometimes a writer just sounds like they're in your head, and that is really cool for me.

Lorde

I'm really interested in kind of weird social situations and cliques, watching girls vying for attention, watching how the popularity thing happens. I've always thought too hard about everything.

Lorde

In a perfect world, I would never do any interviews, and probably there would be one photo out there of me, and that would be it.

Lorde

People respond to something which intrigues them instead of something that gives them all the information - particularly in pop, which is, like, the genre for knowing way too much about everyone and everything.

Lorde