Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Money is the root of all evil. Yeah, money is the root. It's not racism and "this-ism" and "that-ism"; it's our thirst and hunger for money. And that's where all the bodies are buried.
Gangsta to us didn't have anything to do with Al Capone and stuff like that. It's just about living your life the way you want to live it. And you're not going to let nothing stop you.
I want to show people all of me, because that's what I haven't been doing. To be able to play so many instruments, and no one's ever seen me play, it seems like someone who's bluffing.
A lot of the guys were like that - Oscar Pettiford - they just took me under their wing, and that's why I automatically help young people. I just love it, because they did that for me.
It wasn't just music in the Ramones: it was an idea. It was bringing back a whole feel that was missing in rock music - it was a whole push outwards to say something new and different.
I created my lane. No one can ever run my lane because it's mine. I'm the Michael Jackson of my lane. And you know, nobody was as great as Michael. I love Prince, but he's not Michael.
I felt like I was at that breaking point. I just prayed and took my mind off of dreams - I went to church. I felt like a lot of things came together. I'm not perfect but I strive to be.
After I learned the piano, I went on to learn percussion, the tuba, b-flat baritone, French horn, trombone, trumpet, most of the instruments in the orchestra. Trumpet was my instrument.
Men are shallow - we don't remember things like women do. Or we don't bring it up and blurt it out at inappropriate moments. When bridges are trying to be built, we don't detonate them.
In the early days, I was living with Dee Dee for a little while, and he was never around then, either. He would always be out. He was kind of an energetic guy who was always on the run.
Women are my hobby... every man needs something to keep his hands busy, and I don't have a guitar like Eddie and Michael, or some drums to bash like Alex, so I have to find some friends.
Once you free your mind about the concept of harmony and of music being correct, you can do whatever you want. So nobody told me what to do, and there was no preconception of what to do.
Part of me believes that the completed record is the final measure of a pop musician's accomplishment, just as the completed film is the final measure of a film artist's accomplishments.
Cherish your mistakes, and you won't keep making them over and over again. It's the same with heartbreaks and girls and everything else. Cherish them, and they'll put some wealth in you.
It's not a normal recording shift where you do a song and you get a day to tweak it and the third day you mix it. It's like double the work in the period of time it would take to do one.
My personality is very good for nurturing. I'm very empathetic to my artists. You speak to anyone who's worked with me and they'll say, "Oh yeah, Steve's great. He doesn't have the ego."
The closest things to an influence would be people like Charlie Watts or Al Jackson. But I didn't really listen to drummers; I basically played what I thought was needed for the Ramones.
I've come to the conclusion that the best way for me to grow is in a very self-forgiving way: to take a risk and, in response to how a record pans out, take a risk in the opposite charge.
All artists have runners, people that tell them what to do, business managers, lawyers, these - if they get the right ones, they're lucky, and if they get the wrong ones, they're unlucky.
Everybody who comes from the gangster life - they want what that man in the suburbs wants. Nice family. Nice house. Nice cars. Bills paid. Kids in school. Food on the table. Nothing more.
There's a lot of talent in South Central L.A., in Compton and Long Beach and Watts, and the city north of Pico pretty much sits back and waits for that talent to emerge and then steps in.
Prince didn't want to sound like Michael Jackson. Neither of them wanted to sound like Luther Vandross. They didn't want to sound like David Bowie. They were all different, but brilliant.
The one thing I always loved about Michael Jackson: he had fun records, but he's also going to make some important statement with the music as well. He's not going to forsake the culture.
We try and banish whole inner realms. Sometimes, you have to touch the thing inside you're most afraid of and see what happens when you touch it rather than look away from it all the time.
I wanted to be sure that my donation did two things: went directly into the hands of hurricane victims and that it was an amount that could really impact their lives and make a difference.
My favorite would be 'Love to Love You' because from zero, I went to Number One. I don't think it's the best song - the best one is probably between 'Flashdance' and 'Take My Breath Away.'
I've never considered myself a rapper. I know how to do it. I know how to make my voice project, and I know how to stay on beat and what have you, but I've never considered myself a rapper.
You wanna be remembered for making an impact and changing things. I guess for the good or for the bad, it don't matter. But I guess you just wanna be remembered when it's all said and done.
Barry White seemed so filled with self-parody at first that it was easy to dismiss him. But it is becoming increasingly obvious with every additional release that he is a very talented man.
I grew up in a city - it's called Lawrence, Massachusetts. It's about half an hour north of Boston. When my parents got divorced, I moved to New Hampshire because my father worked up there.
I just encourage everyone to make real music and it will fuel the engine and the machine. Just make it real and put your heart into it. Don't make it because you heard someone on the radio.
There is also a particular frustration that I have with language. It's so clumsy. And the reason I'm feeling that is more because on your breathing and your intonation than the actual words.
Michael Jackson was not an artist who comes along once in a decade, a generation, or a lifetime. He was an artist who comes along only once, period… He raised the bar and then BROKE the bar!
Everything in my life has been about sound and making music, so Beats represents just that - the improvement of sound and the dedication to everything I've been doing from the day I started.
I always said that what I do is street knowledge, you let the street know what the politicians of today are doing, and if the politicians are listening, let them know what the streets think.
Whether or not I can get an interview from hip-hop media, that's not going to effect whether or not I can go on tour in Asia and Europe and see all of these different places and experiences.
I'd like to be remembered for music that moves people, that takes them some place else, that means something to them, reminds them of a good time or place, some memory, some positive moment.
I grew up looking at the Grammys. It was a childhood infatuation with these people walking around with gold statues. I felt like they were the best, and that's why I started working so hard.
I've gone seventy-nine hours without sleep, creating. When that flow is going, it's almost like a high. You don't want it to stop. You don't want to go to sleep for fear of missing something.
I had between 20 and 40 songs for 'Detox,' and I just couldn't feel it. Usually, I can hear the sequence of an album as I'm going, but I wasn't able to do that. I wasn't feeling it in my gut.
I don't get nothing but love. In every ghetto all over the world. Nothing but love. They respect that I came outta there and I'm doing it the right way. You can't do nothing but respect that.
Comedies in Hollywood is usually the path of least resistance when it comes to being black in Hollywood and putting movies together. They would rather make us laugh than cry, in some respect.
I really wanted to focus on my songwriting, or songwriting with other people. I wanted to go learn from other people who were really good at the classic, more traditional idea of songwriting.
I believe our society has fell into a pyramid system where there's people relegated to the bottom of that pyramid and there's people that feel like they're entitled to the top of that pyramid.
I can't wait 'til the world embraces Chicago - not only for our talent, but just to visit our city and not be so scared to come to it and not be subjected to what people's perception is of it.
It's not that complicated. If you hear something and it makes you want to hear it again, that's the ticket. You have to be lucky enough to find geniuses, welcome them and get out of their way.
On first listening, Joni Mitchell's 'Court And Spark,' the first truly great pop album of 1974, sounds surprisingly light; by the third or fourth listening, it reveals its underlying tensions.
Technology has a lot to do with how the world is developing at the moment because there are very raw and pure and primal emotions that people are communicating to each other over the Internet.
Prince is king to me. As this half-naked, short black guy who looked like a girl in the 70s and 80s, he was talking about women in a way that was very unusual because he didn't objectify them.
Sly Stone doesn't make good albums: only good records. His style is so infinite and revolves around so many crucial aspects that it has only come together perfectly on a handful of his singles.