“I had arrived years ago in Paris and just wanted to be famous, fast. W...” — Yael Naim Quote

I had arrived years ago in Paris and just wanted to be famous, fast. When you're pretentious like that, and you think you've planned everything perfectly, it's then that everything goes in the opposite way.

When I'd go to Israel, I felt like a tourist. My social and professional ties had started to dissolve, and it confused me. I didn't know whether I should stay here in Paris or go back to Israel, or even cut off all my ties with Israel so I could really plant roots here. Or maybe go somewhere else altogether.

My big influences are Joni Mitchell, and a lot of classical and Indian music, as well as Nina Simone and the personal blues and jazz of Billie Holiday. Other influences for me include Bjork, Nick Drake, and Sufjan Stevens.

Hebrew is my first language, so it's really the most personal and the most simple. When I write in Hebrew, I don't look for sophistication in music; it's just pure emotion that comes out.

When 'Penthouse' and 'Hustler' came along, they confused what I was trying to do. Before they arrived, we were perceived as a sophisticated men's magazine.

Laziness never arrived at the attainment of a good wish.

We might think we don't, but everyone descends from native Brazilians. When Portuguese arrived here, everyone was native Brazilians, so I have that in my blood.

Like many other touchstones of twenty-first-century pop culture, 'The Sopranos' was hatched in the late Nineties, predicting a future that never arrived. It was designed for a decade that would be just like the Nineties, except more so, in an America that enjoyed seeing itself as smarter and braver and freer than ever before.