Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I promise you, if you look at YouTube and see some of my first covers, you will hear that I don't sound good. But I was so obsessed with it and wanted so much to be good at it that I forced myself to figure out what sounds right and what sounds wrong.
It was a reaction to when I was growing up, and women were supposed to be all blonde hair, gold suntan, and pink lips. It was a real black-and-white opposite of what was considered attractive. I was kicking against something I found really oppressive.
You know...sometimes I'll be looking out at the audience and I'll be in the middle of a song, and I'll just stop dead. I'll look out at them, and think what is this... There's one thing that keeps me doing it though, I really love it, I believe in it.
I lived in Japan for about two years. I spent my time equally between religiously studying Aikido in Shinjuku by day and hard partying in Shibuya and Roppongi by night. On more than a few nights, those subways were my own personal stage coach to hell.
I'm a Scrabble nut, and I need something to do while I'm travelling. Scrabble keeps me occupied, I play against myself. I have a high score of 718 that I'm always trying to beat. I'm a good player. You don't want to play me for money, that's for sure.
Singing was more of a hobby, and I was terrified of anyone's opinions. The only reason I kept doing it was because people responded positively, and if they hadn't I don't really know if I'd feel the same. I'm not into fighting for people's affections.
Once you've heard the joke, it's not funny anymore, but it's the way it's told. And I think that's the same with the music: The reason some of my songs have lasted longer is there's a lot of stuff packed in there. You want to hear them more than once.
I figure I wrote 37 songs in 20 years, and that's not exactly a full-time job. It wasn't that I was writing and writing and writing and quit. Every now and then I wrote something, and every now and then I didn't. The second just outnumbered the first.
In a small village near Calcutta, in 1998, a villager who could not speak English sang me What Did You Learn In School Today? in Bengali! Tom Paxton’s songs are reaching around the world more than he is, or any of us could have realized. Keep on, Tom!
I don't want any production credit. I think producers are overrated. They're for people who, first of all, don't know anything about music or arranging and have no ear for their own doings. They can't tell a good solo from a bad solo, stuff like that.
We can all choose to become our potential, not just talk about it or dream about it. But daily, make a shift whereby we begin living and being our potential. With each day, that potential can expand because we are open to learning something every day.
In life, sometimes everything falls into place, and sometimes everything just falls to pieces. The key is to begin creating with these fallen pieces. By improvising, you'll create something magical that might be the best thing you've ever accomplished
I'd rather not get into what I'm talking about lyrically. I think it's impossible not to demystify a song when saying what it's about. Music and art can be damaged severely by too much information; I say that as somebody that has participated in that.
Josh is the guy in the band who's just so friendly and super, wanting to walk up to you and say, 'Hey, I'm Josh. I drum in this band, and I'm a big fan of you, and I really appreciate what you do.' Josh has all these great friends in the industry now.
This record for the first time - feels like a record that really represents my whole entire life and instead of just a period of my life. And it is really kind of eye opening and it makes me feel really good to hear this record and hear all the years.
Every recording session and tour is a very valuable time to me in terms of getting to spend time with the musicians - whether they're friends and family or people I've just met - because I don't have a job where I get to interact with people everyday.
I like marijuana because it keeps me from killing people. And I think there are a lot of people out there who are just like me. The reason it's not legal is because most people get up in the morning and get high, then forget to go out and vote for it.
Eid is here! On the first day, it is a custom for all Malaysian Muslims to ask for forgiveness from our parents. We kiss their hands and wish them 'Selamat Hari Raya' or 'Eid Mubarak.' 'Maaf Zahir dan Batin' means 'to apologize in spirit and actions.'
Exploiting yourself sexually is not a good look. I don't find it encouraging...I just stand there and sing. I'm not worried that I'm a 'plus size' and so much bigger than other artists. No matter what you look like the key is to be happy with yourself.
I get shitty scared. One show in Amsterdam, I was so nervous I escaped out the fire exit. I've thrown up a couple of times. Once in Brussels, I projectile-vomited on someone. I just gotta bear it. But I don't like touring. I have anxiety attacks a lot.
I get so nervous on stage I can't help but talk. I try. I try telling my brain: stop sending words to the mouth. But I get nervous and turn into my grandma. Behind the eyes it's pure fear. I find it difficult to believe I'm going to be able to deliver.
Kale is my best friend. I eat kale salad. I put kale in my smoothies, kale in my soup. Kale, kale, kale! I feel like Popeye. I love it. I definitely need variety or I get super bored, so I have to mix it up with different sauces and tahini or whatever.
I did commit to myself that I would not jump back into being the workaholic that I can be before I gave myself an honest opportunity to create the marriage of my dreams and to create the beginning of the family of my dreams, and that took a hot second.
I think a beautiful quality that's a biological, hormonal imperative for women, whether they have children or not, is that we're built to be empathic. For me, it was finally being maternal in an appropriate way instead of trying to mommy ex-boyfriends.
I love to get to the underbelly of why people are up in arms about anything. Really, what I see is a big shadow in the West, in America especially, and everyone's afraid of looking stupid. But the truth is, I'm a genius and I'm stupid at the same time.
There's too much darkness in the world. Everywhere you turn, someone is tryin' to tear someone down in some way; everywhere you go, there's a feeling of inadequacy, or a feeling that you're not good enough. I want to bring a certain light to the world.
Being on the road, I think, is the most organised part of my life. You know where you have to be every day; you know what your job is every day. I crave that tiny bit of stability, which anyone else would think is the most unstable way of living, ever.
I just find P.J. Harvey so mesmerising to watch because she remains unfathomable. She is the kind of woman who makes you rue the day you weren't born her. She always seems to be the cat that walks alone, and you don't feel you are supposed to know her.
Music, especially as an adolescent, helps to build identity because that's when people start developing a sense of self. You can kind of tell based on what music a person listens to what kind of person they'll be pretty much for the rest of their life.
What I learned about music is that it can have nothing to do with words, instrumentation, image, message, or meaning. The meaning is the melody, the notes, the rhythm - music for the sake of its own beauty, with nothing more required to express itself.
Bermuda - the waters are calm and shallow and are excellent for snorkelling. I loved St, George's on the tip of the island. I got to swing from the vines like a Jungle Jane and visit Crystal Caves, which were the inspiration for TV show 'Fraggle Rock.'
My whole childhood was church. But as an adult, I've grown to understand my relationship with God versus how I sing. People in church are like, 'You sing the devil's music,' but I believe in balance. I can't just party with you. I got to help you, too.
When I was writing my dissertation, I wrote about Freud and the process of sublimation, which is when you learn to stop breast-feeding, or stop going to the toilet whenever you want to. It's about learning to repress a desire for instant gratification.
I think most of us are torn. We have at least two people at war in our body. One person wants to retire and grow fabulous tomatoes, and the other wants to stand up on a pedestal and be worshipped and get bigger and bigger and bigger until she explodes.
Miley is always on, she’s always funny, she’s always writing songs, she’s always making music. The parallel of the film is like Miley says, going back to her home, going back to her roots. Getting back to Tennessee was art imitating life imitating art.
Cause' I don't wanna' spend my life jaded, waiting to wake up one day and find that I've let all these years go by wasted. Oh I don't wanna' keep on wishing, missing, but still every morning the color of the night, I ain't spending no more time wasted.
I'm spontaneous when I'm onstage. If I feel like talking about a particular issue when I'm in the moment, then I will. I speak about women's rights a lot day-to-day, so that's an issue that's important to me for sure. And I'm not a fan of Donald Trump.
I don't know if people feel this way, but I think by nature that when you start off as a young pop singer, they assume that you're a bit pampered, prissy, and precious, or that you live in a bubble and not in the real world. For me that's not the case.
I love feeding off the audience, and to me, what's the point if you're not going to think of the fans. Anyone can play music in their house, but you put it out because you want interact with your fans. And, as an artist, you get so much from your fans.
We started shooting, and then Jodie found out she was pregnant. Forest broke it to me - he'd gone to work and heard it on the radio! It seemed like the movie was doomed. But, like these characters, there was a disregard for all the signs along the way.
What singing means to me, I never did consider myself a singer, I just let people watch me feel music and how it comes through me. I've worked on it and practiced a lot. I mean, music, I dance to it, and singing is just one way of getting it out of me.
We're all friends, inside the music and outside the music. I mean, we don't sound anything alike, we don't approach our music anything alike, but we come from the same genuine place. We want our music to be real and we don't want to compromise our art.
Well the first record is something that you just put so much into. And the second record, people always talk about the sophomore jinx and everything, but I was still able to get through it and still focus on what I needed to do and make timeless music.
I like albums. I like holding them, seeing what they're all about, you know? I like reading liner notes. Even if it's a CD, you're getting kind of an idea of what the band is coming from. Or what they want you to think they're coming from. I like that.
People say Altamont was the end of the 60s. It was unfortunate, but at the time we didnt think of it as signaling anything. The fact that nobody got killed at Woodstock is amazing because that was half a million people. We only had 300,000 at Altamont.
Kingston is so chill. He goes with me everywhere. He's been to every studio in L.A., New York, London. He lives up to his name - total Rasta boy. He gives me a real balance. You can go 100 miles an hour, but you still have to stop to hang out with him.
Writing lyrics is part spontaneous, intuitive and part really thought through and carefully analyzed as you write it. It's a mixture of two approaches, and I imagine writing anything is like that, really. Some of it just flows, and you just go with it.
I just try to do day to day. I'm really bad like that. People get annoyed with me for not thinking far enough in advance. Not having these big, grand goals. There's so much going on in the present. I have trouble dealing with anything longer than that.
Here I found myself in my early 20s, at the height of my career, up against something I was totally powerless against. I had enemies I had never heard of because of this. I certainly didn't have needles hanging out of my arms, nor did I smoke anything.
At the end of the day, we are responsible for our own lives. If anything happens to us, don't blame somebody else. Backtrack and look at what you did to contribute to that. You also contribute to your successes. Once you learn that, you're on your way.