Joanna Newsom's quotable lines

Some of my favourite Joanna Newsom quotes


There are some mornings when the sky looks like a road
There are some dragons who were built to have and hold
.....Clam Crab Cockle Cowrie

Your skin is something that I stir into my tea
.....Clam Crab Cockle Cowrie

dried rose petal, red-brown circles
framed your eyes and stained your knuckles
.....Cosmia

You came and lay a cold compress upon the mess I'm in
.....Emily

The ties that bind, they are barbed and spined and hold us close forever
.....Emily

Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being
.....Emily

Never get so attached to a poem
You forget truth that lacks lyricism
Never draw so close to the heat
That you forget that you must eat,
.....En Gallop

oh, the hills are groaning with excess
like a table ceaselessly being set
.....Monkey and Bear

And I have read the right books
To interpret your looks
You were knocking me down
With the palm of your eye
.....Peach Plum Pear

Down where I darn with the milk-eyed mender
you and I, and a love so tender,
is stretched-on the hoop where I stitch-this addage:
"Bless this house and its heart so savage."
.....Sadie

And all that I want, and all that I need
and all that I've got is scattered like seed.
And all that I knew is moving away from me.
(and all that I know is blowing
like tumbleweed)
.....Sadie

and in a moment of almost-unbearable vision
doubled over with the hunger of lions
.....Sawdust and Diamonds

And all that I've got, and all that I need
I tie in a knot that I lay at your feet.
I have not forgot, but a silence crept over me.
So dig up your bone, exhume your pinecone, sadie
.....Sadie


though my wrists and my waist seemed so easy to break
still, my dear, I would have walked you to the very edge of the water
and they will recognise all the lines of your face
in the face of the daughter of the daughter of my daughter
darling, we will be fine, but what was yours and mine
appears to be a sandcastle that the gibbering wave takes
but if it's all just the same, then will you say my name:
say my name in the morning, so I know when the wave breaks?

I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilight
no, I was all horns and thorns, sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright
so enough of this terror we deserve to know light
and grow evermore lighter and lighter
you would have seen me through
but I could not undo that desire
.....Sawdust and Diamonds
(Dumbstruck! One of the most beautiful lyric sequences I've ever heard)

the difference between
the sprout and the bean
is a golden ring

When you go away
I am big-boned and fey
.....The Sprout and the Bean

Do you want to sit at my table?
My fighting fame is fabled
And fortune finds me fit and able
.....The Book of Right-on

Do you want to run with my pack?
Do you want to ride on my back?
Pray that what you lack does not distract
.....The Book of Right-on

And Jamie has eyes black and shiny as boots
and they march at you, two-by-two (re-loo, re-loo)
when she looks at you, you know she's nowhere near through:
it's the kindest heart beating this side of the blue.
.....This Side of the Blue