Time & Perspective Quote by Fiona Apple

Fiona Apple is describing a kind of artistic deprivation that most people only feel dimly: the panic of having to let go before you are ready. The line hinges on that double negative - "not used to not having enough time" - which sounds like a mind catching on its own snag. It mimics the mental stutter of a perfectionist pushed into deadlines, promotion cycles, label timelines, or simply the accelerated churn of a culture that wants product, not process.

The phrase "live with the songs" is doing quiet, heavy work. Apple is not talking about polishing a track or tweaking a mix; she frames songwriting as cohabitation. A song is a presence you move around with, test against your moods, let it annoy you, let it tell you what it actually is. That implies trust in time as a collaborator: distance reveals what is honest, what is performative, what is merely clever. When she says she usually "lives with it for a little while", she is admitting that revision is not just technical but ethical - an attempt to make sure the emotion survives contact with her own scrutiny.

The subtext is a resistance to the speed economy that flattens everything into content. Apple has long been read as uncompromising; here she gives that stance a tender, practical framing. The anxiety is not about audience reception. It's about the intimate loss of relationship with the work itself - the fear that without time, the songs won't get to become fully hers before they have to become everyone else's.