“I’ve always grown up feeling lonely or other, but through my music, I — Mitski

"“In tenth grade—this says a lot about how developmentally delayed I was—I had in my mind that it was the proper thing for me to have a love interest. And you’d see in movies where two characters instantly see each other and are, like, I’m in love!, and then it just cuts to them on a date or interacting...A lot of my adolescence was like that. Me thinking I was doing the right thing by re-creating a movie scene that I’d seen but then realizing that’s not how it happens in real life.”"

"“I was always bothered when people say, ‘I cry to your music, it sounds like a diary, it sounds so personal,’…Yes, it is personal. But that’s so gendered. There’s no feeling of, ‘Oh, maybe she’s a songwriter and she wrote this as a piece of art.’”"

"“I think its a very feminine album…There can be something incredibly violent about being a woman and having desires as a woman – not so nice, not so soft. And I think thats an interesting experience to draw on…"

"“…A lot of the ‘yous’ in my songs are abstract ideas about music...I will neglect everything else, including me as a person, just to get to keep making music…And even if it actually sometimes hurts, it doesn’t matter as long as I get to be a musician.”"

"“The phrase ‘Be the cowboy you want to see in the world’ has been an inside joke between me and myself…I would always kind of say it to myself in situations where I feel like I’m sort of trapped in my own mind. Like, ‘Oh, what would a swaggering, western movie cowboy do in this situation?’”"

"I think there is in my previous albums a very useful romanticization or glorification of a sadness...wherein Be the Cowboy, theres a realization that no one gives a shit that youre sad, and youre still sad. Your sadness is no longer profound, and youre still sad. Its that kind of growing up and realizing that its not cool anymore to be sad, but youre still sad."