Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Country music has been empowering to women. Women invented it - it was women singing to their children that built country music. The people making country music today might not even know that it all started with a midwife. But it's true, it really did. That's where Michael learned to shake it the way he did. It wasn't from old Papa Jackson, I'll tell you that.
What's getting all the attention is we have South Dakota putting out this direct frontal attack. I'm actually just as concerned about what they're doing every day on the ground. If you restrict access to the point there is no one who can or will do it for you, you've taken the right away. And that's becoming the reality for women in many states in this country.
And nothing formed against me shall stand. You hold the whole world in Your hands. I'm holding onto Your promises. You are faithful. You are faithful. You are faithful. I know Who goes before me. I know Who stands behind. The God of angel armies is always by my side. The One who reigns forever, He is a Friend of mine. The God of angel armies Is always by my side.
A lot of things appearing under my byline were written in one draft. But when I started to write poetry, I started getting fussy about every syllable. I wouldn't allow the work to be seen unless it felt perfect. Not clunky at all, no clunky syllables. So, really, for the printed page, it had to have a feeling of rhythmic and syntactic verisimilitude or something.
I think the role of the artist today is about being provocative. I don't mean shocking, but you have to provoke people into action. As an artist, you ask people for their time. It's the most precious thing anyone has. I'm asking audiences to come to my work and spend some time with it. What I'm really doing, of course, is asking people to take time for themselves.
I literally wouldn't have dreamed of it in a million years that I'm going to be standing there with George (Strait) and Garth and Kenny (Chesney) and Reba (McEntire) and Brooks & Dunn. I don't really have any clue what I'm actually doing with those people because I feel like I'm still just getting started and I've seen them all in concert and they're all my heroes.
There's good in this world. I mean I'm not at all blind to that. God is a good God himself. There are good things. He gives good gifts to His children. But within this world there's a harshness and some of it is unanswered. I don't think I'm trying to provide an answer as much as I am begging people to walk with me in awareness so that we can push back the darkness.
Sure there are people who do everything "I do my own beats, my own lyrics, my own mixing, my own mastering, my own art, my own booking, my own managing, my own merch" it's like... ya that sucks, it can't be very good for you, and might be why you aren't getting ahead because you really need to focus on the music where others should be focusing on those other aspects.
Well, I don't let anyone record with me that is not a fan of mine or believe in my music. Everybody that records for me, from Bob Dylan on down to George Jones, everybody loves me and my music, and I knew they would do their best that they could do, and they did. I didn't doubt them a bit. There's some country people that I wouldn't want, which didn't record with me.
When I finally got together with Rostropovich as a student, he was very focused, almost entirely focused on the music itself, on what the composer had in mind and what he knew about the composer. Many of the works that I played for him had in fact been composed and written for him; he was often the first performer of these works, having known the composers personally.
There's always only been three of us [drummer Joey Shuffield, vocalist, bassist and keyboardist Tony Scalzo and myself], but when we first started we didn't have anybody augmenting the band, so everything had to be kinda to the point anyway. We did that record and toured a while on that, but I just got sick of playing it every night. It felt like doing push-ups to me.
Come all you mad and raging fearless friends of war and peace, Come all you sad self-righteous frightened friends down on your bended knees, All beings on this earth, you must not harm them; All weapons you hold deep within your heart, you must disarm them. Every man you meet's your son. Every woman is your daughter. Go find someeone who's thirsty, And give them water.
You never know what your work is going to do, man, so really, you shouldn't worry about it. But pop stars have to worry about it, because that's their commerce. If you're not number one or selling units, you're not going to be able to make a record next year. For us, it's more like an indie-rock attitude. Put it out, work it, and see what happens. It'll have a shelf life.
What people need to see is this openness, not this church that is so built on structure and religious order that you can't be free and worship God and have a good time because we're so caught up in condemnation, 'I can't say this I can't wear this I can't do this because of this perception of what a Christian is and is not'. It's not about that. God says 'come as you are'.
I grew up down in the hills of Virginia. I can be in Kentucky in 20 minutes, Tennessee in 20 minutes or in the state of West Virginia in 20 minutes. And it's down in the Appalachian Mountains, down there. And it's sort of a poorer country. Most of the livelihood is coal mining and logging, working in the woods and things like that. Most people has a hard life down that way.
Basically, when I hear it now, I don't recognize myself directly in a lot of cases. I was expecting more menace. And the fact that it didn't seem menacing at first troubled me. Then I thought, What the hey, you know? I'm 66 years old, and I could just crack open a beer and listen to it, and it doesn't trouble me that it doesn't kill. Once upon a time, it probably would have.
That's the biggest problem existing in this country! People are always mixing up the word free and freedom. Free is something you get for nothin.' Freedom is a responsibility. We think freedom means do nothing, don't be responsible for your actions.... I think its time for adult Americans to be responsible for themselves, to take back the responsibility of being a free nation.
People often think of artists and scientists as being diametrically opposed, but we both believe something is possible. We have a hypothesis and then we do everything to make it possible, but we don't know if it's possible! All the scientists I've worked with have a natural, easy fit with me. The solutions they find are truly creative. All scientists, in some way, are artists.
I still go to that church now, and they don't believe in instruments in the church. But, my brothers and sisters in the church will listen to me. They will come out to a place to see me play. They will buy all of my records and everything, but they don't believe in bringing that instrument in the church. But, they'll come and watch me somewhere else. Why that is, I don't know.
I mean, what's thematic? How to put it? Going back to, like, 1980, when I started writing poetry. Language itself became an issue. I'd even think about font as an aspect of text, you know, how something looks on a page. A lot of this is the product of a very solitary existence, it's like, language, I mean, you know. A lot of time spent alone in the creation of all of this stuff.
I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows. If I fail, if I succeed...At least I live as I believe. No matter what they take from me, They can't take away my dignity. Because the greatest love of all is happening to me. I found the greatest love of all inside of me. The greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to LOVE YOURSELf...It is the GREATEST love of all
The key thing is figuring out what your issues are, and it's really never about the food. You have to be real and honest with yourself. I had to stop and look and ask myself, ‘Why do I want this? What is the real reason?’ At times it was comfort food like chocolate. I love chocolate and I realized it relaxes me, so when you acknowledge what the issue is, you can control it better.
My dad was always my manager as far as I was concerned, even when I had another manager. At times he let me go with someone else who he thought could take me to another level when he couldn't, and he was right. But they were in it for another reason. He was in it because he wanted to see me succeed no matter what, and he made decisions based on being a dad as opposed to a manager.
That idea of not being exactly who you write as is so crucial. Even looking at those words as I type them, it feels dirty, it feels like I'm admitting something. Unfortunately, I think that's how the conversation around nonfiction is so much of the time - either defensive or accusatory. Aha! You've been caught! But the original essence of something is always lost when it's reproduced.
I wish that I knew the importance of having a regular mammogram, as early detection offers better treatment options and a better quality of life. I ignored the warning signs of the lump underneath my right arm when I discovered it in September 2006 and didn't seek medical attention until March 2007. By then, I was experiencing a late stage of breast cancer that forever changed my life.
I think my weight-training proved to me more than anything that I can do anything in life if I really put my mind to it. I saw me bring myself from 137 pounds to 175 pounds over a seven-year period. That alone said to me that all you have to do is really stick with something, and you can accomplish anything you want. It's brought me great self-esteem because I know I did it. I changed me.
Little brats yellin 'Trick or Treat' all through my screen door, When y'all should be at home sleep, Instead of at my front porch 15 deep. The jack o' lantern came in handy... I can turn my porch light out like I ain't got no candy. But ain't that somethin? You buy a Halloween costume and a pumpkin, Almost gave your children a heart attack. It's a tradition, but who the hell started that?
I like to keep people around me like the guys I have on the road with me, three of them were childhood friends of mine when I was growing up in Scotland. They don't look at me any different than when we were in primary school. So it's good to keep people like that around you. I think if you surround yourself with good honest people, they will tell you what to hear when you need to hear it.
Music is my catharsis for that. It's an incredible blessing that I have this way of expressing myself through music and lyric, and I'm so grateful for that in moments of pain or of suffering - that I have this means of channeling it; it's really amazing. My band as well - having them around and being able to jump on stage and bond together and share that energy is really uplifting as well.
Things like rhyming - it just wasn't falling out of my head that way. So I started to get quite freaked out that I just couldn't write anymore. And then I just kind of went with it, and thought that, "This is the way that my brain's working," in a more direct way, then I should just try it like that for this album. And follow it. Just went with the writer's block, almost - it's a strange thing.
The price that must be paid for mastery is discipline. No one achieves lasting success without it. So from the moment you awake each day, devote yourself to the perfection of whatever you pursue. Do this and you will achieve self-mastery. Achieve self-mastery and you will have the makings of a great leader... Discipline is all about cultivating powerful habits that become part of your lifestyle.
I think there's been this long cycle of the big companies making a lot of money by underestimating people's intelligence and people are used to it now. So, they're so used to having their intelligence underestimated that, for most of them, it really isn't worth the bother of paying a little more attention to something that might hit them on a deeper level. But you can't really read people's minds.
There is always, in the fine arts, a physical interface between the artist's esthetic vision and the material result he seeks. The interface may be the application of brush to canvas, chisel to marble, bow to string... It may be the control of voice in song or the control of body in dance. It is the mastery of the interface that comprises the artistry; it is what constitutes the 'art' in fine art.
My faith in God is everything at this point. Also, my family and friends that I've had around me pretty much my whole life and my boyfriend, we've been together for eight years. I try to keep people around me who've been around me, who've seen me struggle. They know how dedicated I am and how hard I've worked. They know me - not the Jennifer from American Idol and Dreamgirls, but the real Jennifer.
The fans are the end result of what we do. Sometimes I think we forget that those are the folks that mean it in this game. There's plenty of evidence to be found that you can have all the #1 records in the world, but if you really ain't touchin' them, you don't come home with gold records and platinum records. I'm very proud that we've only had one #1 record, but we've sold two and one half million!
I've never been about trying to promote a brand of Squarepusher. I've never been keen on that idea that these are the character traits that I've got to stick with and amplify and keep pushing forward and pushing on the public. I'm really happy to throw it all away and start each record with a blank slate but I concede you've got a point, there are things I can't get rid of, no matter how hard I try.
I think there are a lot of people that lead worship don't really understand the weight of what they do. But I think it is all about leadership. It's how you lead people into understanding what this is about. But also the wind of God, the fresh Spirit of God has been amazing, and that is what has caused people to turn their hearts towards it. Worship music is the most popular thing in Christian music.
You know that one don't play music just for the hours to pass. But you play music because you are in love with music and luckily if it happens that people like what I'm proposing, then I'm happy. Although music is business, yet you don't start thinking about money from the initial stages when you are in music. First propose to the people what they want and if they like it, then the money comes later.
I think that sometimes people fear continuity because it can turn into repetition - and there's a lot of artists who are really good at creating something new all the time. But for me it's about the consistency in my story. Because after all, I'm the protagonist in everything. All the songs are about my life so naturally there will be some connection because I'm still the same person I've always been.
I think, then, there's the sort of, like, political dimension to lyrics. One of the problems that I've had with my output as a lyric writer is that I look back at it and there's some turn-of-phrases and some images and some kind of montage-y kinds of things I'm really proud of. But it kind of bums me out that people have told me again and again that they don't really understand what I'm trying to say.
I think the more that I can find myself getting out of the way - like you said yourself - trying to get out of thinking too much, and sometimes something truly special can happen. That's the beautiful mystery of song writing - that you really don't know where these songs come from exactly, and you don't know how you came up with them - and god bless it that you should have the gift of channeling that.
Well you can see that I'm still in motion. It happens that you share the music with the audience. That is the best happiness an artist can have. I'm not alone on stage but with a group of musicians. So the more the music is successful, the more the audience feel happy about the music. It's the responsiblity of an artist to make his fans happy. That is proposition. I'm always talking about proposition.
At the end of the day I see myself as a communicator. So any way that I can, any medium, any art form that I can use to communicate the truths of the Lord and scripture and my passion, then I'm going to do it. I don't know, I may do a spoken word piece one day, or I may turnaround and try to write a short story. I don't know, it just depends, but anything artistically that I can use I'll try to do it.
Love is like grass. If you fall on it, it may leave a stain and some temporary pain. But you'll get over the pain, it will eventually stop hurting. Now maybe the stain ruined your favourite pair of jeans, or maybe it was nothing special that was ruined, but either way the stain remains there. And with time, it will begin to fade, but it will always be there, a permanent reminder that you, too, once fell.
Alexandros of Antioch took a block of marble and chiseled away from it everything that was not his masterpiece, the Venus de Milo. If you will chisel away one fault from your character every day, you may discover - a) that you're actually a statue of Margaret Thatcher. b) that you're still just a block of marble. c) that there are pigeon droppings on your shoes. d) that you, too, are a hidden masterpiece.
I'm always trying to want to connect with fans and to connect them to each other. I mean, there's other things that I'm trying to do, but in terms of connectivity, that is really important to me. And I am a smaller artist still and there are people that are super passionate about my music, but not everyone in their circle knows about me. But yeah, I've always trying to find ways to connect fans to each other.
But the poetry side is what appeals more to me today. Metaphor, just absurd linkages and coming up with categories, labeling, taxonomy, and I'd say that I do have some tools left. There are days I can't make a sentence out of anything, and anything I make looks clunky to me. But I still have a general grasp of the cliché, of the generic sentence. And if I didn't have that, I'd be a blob of putty on the floor.
There's really educated women out there who are feminists and they have read up on their stuff. They can talk to me right now, and school me on some things I've never known, and that's amazing, you are a scholar, you are wise, you are educated. But the unfortunate thing is also the reality, and the fact is, millions of people might not even know who these educated feminists are - hundreds will, thousands maybe.
It dawned on me at some point that our music makes certain people happy - I never thought we'd have that effect and it's really gratifying and humbling. My least favorite is the exhaustion that comes with traveling a lot, the touring related exhaustion. And the crazy thing is that we've all been doing this for years and your body never gets used to it - you always feel messed up. But it's a good problem to have.
When I'm awake all night, sometimes I see the people and the city waking up around me. I feel a little bit moody at them for stepping into my night-time. What I want is that feeling when you're in the rain, or a storm. It's a shiver at the edge of your mind, an atmosphere of hearing a sad, distant sound, but it seems closer - like it's just for you. Like hearing rain or a whale-song, a cry in the dark, the far cry.