Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
And it's okay if you have to go away Oh just remember the telephone works both ways And if I never ever hear them ring If nothing else I'll think the bells inside Have finally found you someone else and that's okay Cause I'll remember everything you sang ((You and I both))
With everything you're letting go, I'm sure it's going to have a different value to you. And every time you let go you're going to be a different age or there's going to be different circumstances. So I think the best way to do it is to simply wish the best for that thing.
I always think of the live show first, where the song is gonna go in the show. That's why they aren't sad songs. When I play, I want to make people happy, not sad. It's such a pleasure for me to do what I do, and I want other people to feel some form of that pleasure, too.
Being the ideal of a strong woman means utilizing all the things that God gives you. People are always saying to me, 'You're a strong female, so why are you wearing a bikini on the cover of that magazine?' Being a strong woman is misconstrued to be something evil and ugly.
Everyone, whether you are married or have a boyfriend or girlfriend, there's always someone who has a hold of your heart. You learn to let it go, but there's always a place in your heart. For me, it was someone I went to college with and we had an amazing bond, but I left.
I was in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. I've argued for Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the United Farm Workers. I've been a radical for a long time. I guess it's too bad. I'd be more marketable as a right-wing redneck. But I got into this to tell the truth as I saw it.
When I was really little I would sit in the back of my dad's car when he'd be playing old-school music. He'd turn down the music and turn around and I'd be singing and know all of the words but I didn't even know how to talk. From then on I've always wanted to be a singer.
It's always been the same from a long time ago, it's people with promises and people dangling carrots and when you're young and impressionable, and ambitious, you want to believe them. I was always lucky because there was always part of me that didn't believe these people.
I don't like the way recording to digital sounds. Most of the time, when I'm recording to two-inch tape, I still have a romantic vision of how songs sounded coming out of the radio when I was younger, and how they sounded coming out of my little four-track cassette player.
Creativity is simply the human brain forming new connections between ideas, and we all are engaged in this process every day. The common idea that there are some people who are creative and some who are not is a myth. On some level, we are all artists. We are all creators.
So popular is beer, the world's best-selling alcoholic drink, that it is often taken for granted. Yet scientific analysis shows that a glass of beer has within it as many aromas and flavors as fine wine. Not everyone understands this, but an increasing number of people do.
I think that talented people really do have insecurities, and that is one of the things that kind of motivates them, because that's one thing they know they're good at. And when they're up on that stage, you can do no wrong. The audience is yours; they're there to see you.
I'm really lucky that I've had a little gang of people who I've been involved with for a long time... I've been really lucky to have a gang of people who have always been there to encourage me to get on with it. Styles come and go, but I try not to take any notice of that.
Poetry is a solitary process. One does not write poetry for the masses. Poetry is a self-involved, lofty pursuit. Songs are for the people. When I'm writing a song, I imagine performing it. I imagine giving it. It's a different aspect of communication. It's for the people.
It's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing. I'm not a musician. I never thought of performing in a rock n' roll band. I was just drawn in. It was like being called to duty - I was called to duty, and I did my duty as best as I could.
I wanted to be a cheerleader, like my sister was - all the most popular and beautiful girls are cheerleaders and I wanted that, and it demolished this vision of myself. That's when I found the piano, when music saved me; that's when I first attempted to write my own songs.
When I was working at the Sprint store, I got laid off. I was bummed out, but I stayed positive. I used the money I had earned while working there to make my first album. Without that job, maybe 'Corazon Sin Cara' would never had been made. It's a very inspirational story.
I realized that, instead of moving people closer to a salvation decision, an answer can push them further away. Rather than engaging their minds or urging them to consider an alternative perspective, an answer can give them ammunition for future attacks against the gospel.
I consider myself a businessman, not a celebrity or a music star. When I'm getting involved with something I need to executive produce it or be a part of putting it together as an investor. I want to play both sides. That's more important to me than just being a celebrity.
The first year I started hockey, I didn't know how to skate, so I got on the ice with all of the hockey players, and we were doing drills where we had to go backwards in figure eights. And I could not skate, and I just kept falling on my butt, and it was very embarrassing.
Ben [Peeler] and I have known each other for a decade. He trusts my crazy ideas and spontaneous combustion and he gets the players I want and knows the kind of personality players I like. He has taste that I trust and that to me is more important than any technical things.
A song has a life of its own. It's an autonomous thing, separate from your own experience, almost. And the mere repetition of it means it's subject to change; it means approaching it differently, expressing different emotional aspects of it. It doesn't feel like wallowing.
I'm no spring chicken. The same arthritis that ate up my left hip that finally got replaced hasn't stopped there... And touring is a lot of work. I'm impressed when I see people like Eric Clapton out there. Gee whiz, Eric, give me a break! I know it's gotta hurt somewhere.
As Mick Jagger will tell you, performing is an aerobic work-out. I've got the bass guitar, which is the heaviest of all the instruments, and I'm a little girl, in boiling-hot leather under the lights. You have to keep the fitness level up if you want to look good up there.
I used to be offended when people would compare me to Erykah Badu. Because I'm black, thick, and have large lips? There's nothing similar about us whatsoever, and I felt very disrespected by the fact that people needed to pigeonhole me. I wasn't even raised on Erykah Badu!
For everything I do, I think about a 6-year-old girl and her mom that I saw at my concert last night. I think about what those two individuals would think if I were at a club last night. I never want to be arrested, and I never want to get a DUI, those are my moral values.
When I'm in management meetings when we're deciding my future, those decisions are left up to me. I'm the one who has to go out and fulfill all these obligations, so I should be able to choose which ones I do or not. That's the part of my life where I feel most in control.
Humans can't live in the present, like animals do. Humans are always thinking about the future or the past. So it's a veil of tears, man. I don't know anything that's going to benefit me now, except love. I just need an overwhelming amount of love. And a nap. Mostly a nap.
When your culture comes from watching TV every day, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities. None of that happened where I was. You're almost taught to realize it's not for you.
Then it evolved into more of a ballad style singer/songwriter thing. And there was a conflict in trying to merge the two styles with the same band behind me. 'Cause the musicians that I would need to do ballad-oriented tunes would require musicians who were more into jazz.
The music comes through me, and I let it come the way it comes, and it shapes itself. I just hold space for it. I don't intend to write it for a purpose, but it comes as it comes and am proud of the way it can support change because I believe strongly in what I sing about.
I think The 'Cheetah Girls' was originally supposed to be one film, but then it became two and three, which was a huge deal. But like all Disney franchises, they have to come to an end at some point. I was so grateful we went out with a bang. I think we died off peacefully.
I prefer things that are private, so I love recording and I love making films, as a filmmaker, because it uses every bit of what you have experienced or know, whether it's graphics composition, decorating, psychology, storytelling, or whatever it is. It's a wonderful thing.
Fearlessness, absolutely. Discipline. You also need open-minded creativeness that lets everything in. You never want to lose a word or a phrase, yet every one should count. Always the best language possible. And, finally, knowing when to leave it alone. Stop when it's done.
The challenge of course is in sobriety and that's been the blessing, to realize, to take accountability for the ways that your own thinking impacts your happiness, and your serenity, and your ability to be a productive and a loving, giving member of your family and society.
Pilgrims travel to Jerusalem to see the Holy Land, and the foundations of their faith. People go to Washington, D.C. to see the workings of government, and the foundation of our country. And fans flock to Nashville to see the foundation of country music, the Grand Ole Opry.
I'd been sending out demos and CDs for years. I knew my stuff was good enough, but I was getting nowhere. Then, three people - my future manager and two publishers - happened to send one of my tracks to EMI publishing in the same week. All of a sudden, they were interested!
I mean, I have a daughter, and it's a very bad message to send to my daughter that to be valid or accepted or to have value, you have to look a certain way. It's all about appearance, and not about education and not about contributing. I think we've completely lost our way.
The truth is, however rich people get, they hate paying tax. Some live abroad for a year, or years at a time just to avoid it. Bizarre really - desperate economic migrants are driven to leave their homeland because of poverty; tax exiles are driven overseas by their wealth.
To outsiders it probably seems like splitting hairs, but to me, Bright Eyes is a simply the collaboration between myself and Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. What you hear is definitely the sum of all our ideas and represents all three of us. But I still write the songs myself.
We were great mates. We didn't really go out together because we never really had the time to go out. But we were with each other all the time anyway because we were working all the time. We could sit down and talk for hours, and we still can. We just understood each other.
Does it bother me that some people are burning their own System CDs and taking money out of my pocket? Not really. This has always been about putting the best possible version of the song in the fans hands. It was like selling an artist's painting before he had finished it.
What I love about how my career has gone up to this point is that I've always, always put my head down on my pillow at night, and I've been able to say that I've done, honestly, what I've felt like I wanted to do. And that's really all you can hope for in everything you do.
At a time when everybody in our culture is talking about tolerance, it seems that tolerance has the highest premium of any response - "If we just tolerate one another..." But my feeling is: Who wants to be tolerated? People don't want to be tolerated; they want to be loved.
There was a perception that reality-show people are just mere personalities, that they don't have real talent, and I worked real hard to change peoples' minds, one show at a time, and proved a lot of people wrong. I'm proud I was the first to do that for 'Idol' on Broadway!
We give scholarships to high school kids and a new library of books to every preschool child in the county where I was born. I didn't have books at home so I did all my reading at school. I love books and I believe that helping kids to read gives them a great start in life.
Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston, I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, 'Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.'
I'm not a big TV guy, but I love either 'Auction Hunters' or those repo shows on truTV. It's really just glorified 'Jerry Springer' is all it is. Every now and then, it's just mindless entertainment. We'll be on the bus, and we'll laugh at it. Those are my guilty pleasures.
I say that I do soul, R&B music. I have so many influences, from Billie Holiday, Nina Simone to Stevie Wonder and Prince and even Al Green and Bjork. And a lot of hip hop music has influenced me a lot - you know - De La Soul and Digital Underground and A Tribe Called Quest.
I've been around a long time, and when I was at the top of the hill, I was very ahead of my time! Evidence of that is that my music is still current today - you know, rappers sample it all the time. So, rather than compromise my artistic integrity, I concentrated on movies.