Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think I have advanced ADD.
Toronto's a delightful city.
I kind of go for the MGM version of every musical style.
There's a side of me that identifies with Aileen Wuornos.
Less money for public media means less access to the arts.
I'm pretty indiscriminating, and I have awful taste, generally.
You know, if I can survive marching band, I can survive anything.
The other kids wanted to play Destiny's Child, but I wanted Anita O'Day.
I never know how to get off the phone, so I'm terribly admiring of people who can.
I will say that art may well be the only thing that lasts, so I guess it's worth trying.
You can criticize something you strive for, and you can avoid something you dream about.
I think there are nice things about every era. I wish we could just take the nice things.
Love is such a fleeting emotion. It's such a small part of the things you do in your life.
I have trouble with any kind of focus or concentrating, or getting anything done at all, really.
I thought I had a talent for alienating people, but I have no idea what it is that doesn't go over.
I'm glad if people can listen to some music and maybe fix some prejudices of their own, just by thinking.
The civilised cultures are the most cruel. It's the same with education - often it breeds sadistic forms of cruelty.
You know, I wanted to get married, and so I - but I, you know, I realize no matter what you want, it's kind of a fantasy.
In New York City, when they develop something, they never use the old buildings. It's so wasteful. Why not use what's there?
In the hierarchy of instruments, if you're a harpist, you're considered someone with a brain much more than if you're a singer.
My mom. She really encouraged me. That's the trouble with education: Unless you have a really supportive parent, you get left behind.
I'd love to give my music to someone who really likes to wow the crowd. I feel like half the time I just want to hide in the dressing room!
I really don't care what people say. It's amazing that feminism continues to exist at all, considering how much counter-feminism is out there.
I'm glad I got a record contract, because all of a sudden everything you were doing before that made you a stupid person now makes you a smart person.
I think people at most record labels really like music, but it's hard because everything is so subjective, and everyone's so creative in their own right.
Music can make the cerebral accessible, the subconscious hummable. It communicates our shared needs and desires as sentient beings better than any other medium.
Public radio is the last oasis of free and independent music. For satellite radio channels, you have to subscribe; commercial stations are as corporate as basic cable.
I'm not sure I know how to make music anymore. Maybe you're given a window into things for a time, and beyond that maybe it goes away. Why should you expect it to stay?
I love writing for dancers. You don't have to worry about the lyrics. I think to write words without music must be so frustrating. It must be always be so good, so perfect.
I was approaching adolescence. For some reason, I guess my mother thought it would be less crazy out in the suburbs, which it wasn't. I just think adolescence is hard for anyone.
I feel like you should always be questioning the genre you're doing. If you're doing something that sounds like a lullaby, it can be good to make it about someone stalking someone.
Just like everything, even the most fun and creative endeavor requires work to be successful, and I'm so sick of working. I'm a lazy person at heart. I never meant to be a go-getter.
I don't listen to much rap, really. I can rarely listen to a whole record of it, because musically, it's very formulaic, and oftentimes it doesn't have the best hooks on every track.
I used to play in the subway. If everyone tossed in a quarter, at the end of the day it would add up. It shows you aren't invisible. And it's better than being ignored, or kicked in the head, or worse.
As long as you have imagination, you never need to work. You never get bored. You could just walk around and go to museums and check out new movies. You could be busy in New York city for 10,000 years.
If we went back to the basics of vegetables, legumes, grains - the things closer to the Earth - it's a lot better for the Earth and for other people. We can feed more people, we can feed the starving people.
I don't listen to much rap, really. I can rarely listen to a whole record of it, because musically, it's very formulaic, and oftentimes it doesn't have the best hooks on every track. I like my music to be very musical.
You have to reflect honestly what's around you in your music. I think a lot of people are just obsessed with their own relationships, so that is an honest reflection of what they see. A lot of people don't go much deeper than that.
In high school, I was always into Jerry Lee Lewis, and they decided they needed a piano player for the jazz band. I had my little boogie-woogie thing that I did, so I did my little boogie-woogie thing. I had a very high-pitched voice.
It was not very hard to do a double album. Nobody thinks it's a good idea if you're an unknown singer-songwriter. But I just kind of feel like if I want something, I can get it. That's the good side of being American, or something, you know?
It's always so nerve-wracking being up there on stage. It's even harder playing in your hometown - and I have a couple of home towns - but, you're playing for all the people you knew in high school, so it causes no small degree of panic in my mind.
If you're dissatisfied anywhere, New York is the place to be. If you're unhappy at college in Topeka, I don't know what there is to distract yourself with, you know? So anyway, I distracted myself until I decided that the distraction could be a school in and of itself.
I tried to be just a singer of standards when I was starting out. And there was nothing special enough about my voice to make it that far. So I feel a bit like Rod Stewart. Once you've had that rock career, people will give you that chance where otherwise they might not.
There are so many people that do things better than I do: dancing, singing like a black girl, singing country. Or if, while they sing, they move their arms in and around their crotch; when I sing, I play the piano and look like a little choirgirl. I'd like to mix it up like that.
If you look through the century, certain things have gotten better and certain things have gotten worse. I wouldn't say overall that things have gotten better. I think you could say things have gotten worse, but I don't think you could say that things have gotten better. Overall. You can't say that.
While a lot of my day, like most people's, is spent thinking about me, I can see how it's a universal thing: the competition, the clashes of personality that fuel the world and fill the world, are the exact same ones that take place just between two people. I just think politics is a form, en masse, of human relations.
I'd been knocking on record companies' doors for so long, and I had gone on a lot of auditions. It's weird when you go to those auditions through the Village Voice or something. You never know what to expect. You just press Floor 3 on the elevator and pray that it's not... You know, anyone can place an ad, so it's really freaky.
I'm just kind of sick of music. I don't know what I want to do. It's not that I feel suicidal or anything, but I just want to end this life. I just want to be somebody else now. Sometimes I feel like that. You always think, "If I just cut my hair really short and dye it brown and put on a little goatee, no one would know it was me, and I could..."
I got sent off to my grandmother's for five months and watched a lot of TV and had a lot of grilled cheese with butter on it - because she was English and put lots of butter on everything - and yogurt. The English are big on dairy products, you know? I'd have an earache, and she'd be like, "Here, have some milk." Wonderful woman, but she had kind of screwed-up nutrition ideas.
In terms of content, a lot of rap is crap, with all the sexism and homophobic bullshit. It's incredible how rappers are always preaching nonconformity - you know, "I'm just gonna go my own way and be my own man and blah blah blah" - but they're the first ones to do so many things that they have to do. They have to do that hip-hop thing, a certain way of walking, and it's so conformist.