Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The idea of massive amounts of fame-having my face on Walgreens end-caps and pizza boxes-I don't fantasize about that. I'm happy with just being a songwriter. I'd rather have smaller numbers [of fans] that are really into what I'm doing than a massive amount of people that don't really know what I'm about.
Granny beads are what they're called when a grandma works the garden all day - you always see them - they have a handkerchief around their neck with a lot of dust on them, and then the sweat will go down and make these black beads of sweat and dirt around their neck. And that's what they call granny beads.
Like William Morris, Joe Hollis asks us to perceive paradise gardening as a juncture where artfulness directly serves life. In fact, we might go so far as to define this paradise as the place where art is indistinguishable from life, and where simplicity is codified as the best path for achieving happiness.
I went to my library, right? And I started to research the Bill of Rights and I did not technically find anything that said all Americans shall eat shrimp with whoever they like. But, I found some things that are close enough to infer that I am within my legal rights to enjoy seafood with whomever I choose.
In a time when everything can be next day and ordered and put on credit and paid for, music to me is promise, all promise, very little realization. It's the promise of walking into a room with a guitar and not being sure you will leave with an idea that will take, not being sure it won't slip away from you.
Instead, what I was beginning to understand was that however things unfolded from here on, whatever the next chapter was, my life could never be the sum of one circumstance. It would be determined, as it had always been, by my willingness to put one foot in front of the other, moving forward, come what may.
I've never really focused on if I had good habits when I sang or if I had bad habits, or if I was breathing correctly. So, I started doing vocal exercises and would stretch out before I sang, stuff to help my breathing. It's funny, you breathe your whole life then you find out you're not doing it correctly.
The fight still isn't people of colour versus white. It's the people versus the system built to keep us down. That's the first line of the Constitution. And the system is manmade but is made of no man. Everyone, regardless of class, creed, culture and ethnicity can fight the system and help to break it down.
You can see girls getting too excited and they start crying or worse. In a lot of these countries they don't get a lot of gigs to go to, so when they get to see their favorite artist they take full advantage of it. Obviously the excitement builds up too much for some on the night and they get a bit... crazy.
I'll tell you what's crazy: Nobody in my family is musically inclined, no form, fashion, anything. I always had some type of connection to music though. This was long before I ever knew that I could sing, or I ever even tried to start singing. It was something different, man, it made me feel some type of way.
The biggest lie in the world is in answer to the question, 'How are you?' People usually say, 'I'm fine,' but that's mostly bull. Everyone wants to display being perfect. They tell themselves and their friends, 'I drive this car, I own this house, I'm fine.' People ball up into these tight wads of repression.
I'd done drag since I was 14, for special occasions, and in 2010 a friend of mine with her own burlesque group was looking for a host. During a party I was just fooling around, taking the microphone, saying stupid, funny things, and she asked me afterward if I wanted to host her burlesque show every Saturday.
You can tell if there's magic in something. When you start it, you want to finish it and you want it to be perfect. If you're not inspired, and you're working hard to pull inspiration from somewhere and make a song something it's not, then it's very contrived, and I don't like to write music that's contrived.
The whole impetus behind going solo was an artistic inspiration in the sense that, obviously, success is fantastic. But as one becomes successful and gets branded with a certain sound, if the brand starts to become more of the focus than the evolution of the art, then that's putting the cart before the horse.
I firmly believe that every six years, a person goes through a serious change. Think about it: At 6, you start school. At about 12, you start hitting puberty. And then it goes on. You start hitting these different mental levels, and people change. I think that's part of the reason the divorce rate is so high.
Our intention is to develop more subtlety in contemporary electronic sounds. We don't like nostalgic projects. We have disparate interests and many philosophical concerns. In the past 10 years, I have realized music in the classical tradition - I have composed for strings, brass, and electronic, and alp-horn!
We are fascinated by the club and the dancefloor; we are also fascinated by very nuanced sonic experiences, and somehow we are convinced that we can bring together these two contradictory forces and create some kind of sonic supernova. This would be the candle that has always been at the center of our project.
To learn your artistry and to be able to perfect that, is overwhelming. Especially when you are exuding love. The human emotion is a very delicate thing, so you have to be careful about how you present it because it can be kind of scary, or too overwhelming if you're not careful. So I try to just keep it love.
You do your work. You get up in the morning, you choose an outfit, you know? It doesn't have to be the best thing that you wear, you know what I mean? It's music, man. You do an album, complete it, and then musicians are on to the next thing. Nobody cares about how many units it sold as compared to the old one.
Life on the road is very different from a normal, day to day life, and sometimes that surrealistic existence can have an effect on you, you tend to forget that's not really how things are supposed to be. But there comes a point where you have to pace yourself and find a place in your mind where you can be real.
I think when you hear good music or the experience you have to the music which makes you remember it, it's so priceless. Really, it's the same thing for us when we make it, to actually see the idea come together to be something that's special and then to see people kinda degrade it, it is a little discouraging.
Artists who believe they control everything control what they know. Artists who allow outside forces to intervene are like canoes going down rapids. The rocks are there. If you fight them, you fly off the bow. If you allow the current to take you, you can pass through swimmingly. It is a rare gift at every bend.
We had a music teacher in sixth grade, and I saw her tune her guitar. I said, 'Whoa. There's a certain way to do this.' I bought a packet of strings - some of mine were broken - and had her tune it for me. For a while, I just kept it like that. But I got the Internet finally, when I was 14, and started learning.
I was inspired by a question that kept repeating itself in my mind: Could I really change my life? I'd spent so many days, weeks, months, and years thinking about doing things with my life, and now I wanted to know, if I committed to a goal and woke up every single day working hard at it, could I change my life?
I think a lot of my fans are anxious for more than just my singles. They know I'm a dreamer. They know I'm someone who is real spiritual. I love to have fun, and I always have fun songs - songs you can party to. But I also always have songs you can live to, that when you're depressed, it may lift your spirits up.
Somebody's gonna give you A lesson in leavin' Somebody's gonna give you back What you've been givin' And I hope that I'm around To watch 'em knock you down It's like you to love'em and leave'em Just like you loved me and left me It's like you to do that sort of thing Over and over again You're a fool-hearted man.
One night I couldn't sleep and I was up and just Googling random stuff and I'm like, 'Hmmm, PETA.' I saw all the videos and I just thought it was horrible, Pickler told People. It's animal cruelty. A lot of it has to do with knowing what happens to the animals and it really bothered me and so I will not eat meat.
Contemplation: I read a lot of books on philosophy and religion, and try to keep always growing in that part of my life, because without having a spiritual grounding, I think you can get really swayed by the winds of all the praise or the criticism; it's all very, kind of, up and down. Try to stay up and focused.
If tomorrow all the things were gone I'd worked for all my life, And I had to start a new one with just my children and my wife, I'd thank my lucky stars to be living here today, 'Cause the flag still stands for freedom and they can't take that away. And I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free.
I definitely consider myself a Christian. There's things that I believe in, there's things I have a self-belief on. I know I got a great relationship with God and the universe. I just believe in being a righteous person and karma. Doing unto others as you would have done unto you. I really want to help teach that.
For whatever reason, whenever I'm having a get-together, I'll turn on my projector and play YouTube videos of 'Russian driving fails.' Russians all have dashboard cameras in their cars, so there are all these videos of crazy wrecks and people almost getting hit in the street. It's a conversation starter, for sure.
My parents always have taught me 'you're good enough'. So, whenever I got bad comments from the judges, or I'd get on the Internet and read what bloggers have written about me, I would get so down, and I would get so sad. The biggest support group was obviously my parents, and I'd call them. And they'd build me up.
Our street corners keep secrets, and our road signs only suggest, never deciding for us, never knowing if the destination to which they lead, is where we truely belong. Life's greatest tragedy is not that it will some day end, but that most of us just live to follow directions, and many times we end up totally lost.
I do what I love to do at the moment. If I wake up tomorrow and decide I want to dance, that's what I'd do. Or design clothes. I think I'd throw myself into whatever I'm doing now. It's not about abandoning what I was doing before, or giving up. It's about knowing that if I die tomorrow, I lived the way I wanted to.
G.O.O.D. Music is just real tastemakers, man. Kanye's a real tastemaker. One thing that I feel is tight about G.O.O.D. is that a lot of people have their own style, and you can see that. My style is different than Pusha's, it's different than Cudi's. But it's also slightly similar 'cause we have some similar tastes.
The thing about being an artist is that you evolve so quickly, you grow, you learn, you change, you find yourself hating work that you made months prior. That's the hard part about making an album, but every couple days I fall asleep listening to my album front to back and I lay there feeling so proud of what I did.
I've got a vibe going on with a lot of what I've been doing, and to completely change it based off of me having a child might be a little confusing. I'm sure as my life goes forward, and she starts growing up, there will be a lot more things to include in my music. But, at this point, I'm just sticking to what I do.
The way I heard about The American Giving Awards was from the people that I work with. My publicist and I had a conversation a while back about wanting to really get involved more and more. We've been working with the National Council for Adoption with the children's home that I was adopted from called Holston Home.
There is a reason Christianity is violently opposed in our world while other religions and philosophies are tolerated... Biblical Christianity evokes violent responses from some people, because only in Christianity is there an absolute right and wrong. People hate the Bible and Christianity because of the law of God.
I'm learning slowly to not be as much of a control freak. I can't afford to be all the time, but I'm getting better at communicating. Delegating parts of my vision for other people to execute has made it an easier process for knowing what I want, and what people can handle, and what I should probably save for myself.
You know, if you use instrument, why, you have to stay on perfect time - timing. And if you do a cappella - I'm so bad, just wonder, you know, maybe I'll sing one verse this way and one verse another. And if you're doing it a capella, you don't have to keep any time. You can just go out as far as you want to with it.
I've read about myself and my husband and my family, to the point where they've called my parents, they've called my brothers, offering money to tell stories. They call friends of mine. I'd just like for them to just ... don't badger us. Don't scrutinize us. We have children and they have to live, too. It's not fair.
Our interpretations through the years and generations have always changed, but the emotions, ideas, and the thoughts of the composers are still with us, and these are the premise of the music. The time factor has little to do with it because, after all, it is about human feeling, the Universe and who we are as people.
Everybody enjoys arguing about the current state of music because it feels as if you are talking about something incredibly important, yet it requires little understanding of the subject matter at hand. It's like world politics meets the pink questions in Trivial Pursuit. Points are made but nothing gets accomplished.
The first five years as a writer, I didn't know how to write at all. I couldn't write my way out of a white paper bag. And yet, I did some remarkable things. And later on, there were periods where I got this mission to find an articulate voice with rewrites and all. There were periods where I was as dense as Faulkner.
To me, my Dad's the greatest guy - next to Jesus Christ - who ever walked this planet. He's been that outstanding male role model in my life. And he's still the same guy I grew up around, very conscious of the image he sets forth. As he would say, 'Wouldn't do anything behind your back that I wouldn't do to your face.'
What is being black? It's making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that's seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you'll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude's.
I realise there are situations where I camp it up, make myself into a sort of novelty character to ease things along. Like, if I ever feel uncomfortable in a situation, I can just make myself into this funny Will-and-Grace-guest-star type of person, and maybe people will not pay attention to the deeper things going on.
What happens in the studio is technically the same thing that happens on the stage. In the past I had to make quite brutal adaptations of the material to make it work on stage. I don't always like doing that because sometimes you're shaving away the things that you actually quite like about them, the spontaneity of it.
I would almost say that in our solo activities there is an overarching line of thought that is Porter Ricks itself. Our solo work delivers the details. So occasionally we have to go back to our corners and study and research these details to be able to bring it back into the Porter Ricks project, and into the dialogue.