I’m still a bit of a romantic and an idealist and hopelessly naive.

In this self-description, Marling frames her creative and personal outlook as deliberately open-hearted: “romantic” and “idealist” suggest a commitment to meaning, beauty, and moral possibility, while “hopelessly naive” acknowledges the vulnerability that comes with those commitments. The phrasing balances sincerity with self-awareness—she recognizes that idealism can be read as impractical, yet she claims it anyway. Read in light of her public persona as a writer-performer drawn to speculative, humanistic storytelling, the line can be taken as a defense of imaginative faith: a willingness to believe in people and in transformative narratives even when cynicism might seem more “realistic.”