So much of what we do as artists is a combination of personal experience and imagination, and how that all creeps into your work is not so linear.

Krall is describing artistic creation as an interweaving of lived experience and invention rather than a straightforward act of transcription. Even when an artist draws on autobiography, the transformation into art happens through memory, selection, craft, and the demands of form—so the influence of life on the finished work appears indirectly, in tone, phrasing, emotional emphasis, or interpretive choices. By stressing that this process is “not so linear,” she resists simplistic readings that map songs or performances neatly onto biographical events. The remark also fits a performer’s art: interpretation can smuggle personal feeling into standards or others’ compositions, making the work intimate without being literally confessional.