Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When you open your mind up, and you go into a creative state, you can't just switch if off. When you have an idea, a creative impulse, and then you ignore it, it can keep you up when you just want to go to your bed - which is why it's great to have voice recorders on your phone!
I can't stand what people do to each other. I think we're brilliant as a species. I think we are amazing. I think that God is incredible, that He just gave us everything. Everything in our face. Everything for us to use. And sometimes we're such shitheads. And it makes me crazy.
I don't mind critics. I mean, I wrote for Rolling Stone for a hot minute. I like criticism. I enjoy criticism. The thing I don't like is cruelty for cruelty's sake. You don't have to be a jerk to say something negative. You can say something in the negative sense and have class.
I don't mind if someone thinks I'm a sell out. I go to bed happy knowing I do what I do and I'm not doing anything for reasons of money, and if I were trying to pick up chicks, I'm doing a horrible job. And if I wanted to drive awesome cars, I'm doing a really bad job there too.
I'm estranged from social media and I don't really deal with it. I tried to work on a website and it took up all my time. People wanted me to have a Twitter account and I spent the whole day figuring out what would be the first message. I still haven't wrapped my head around it.
More of my songs are intended to be funny than almost anyone else. Sometimes maybe it cheers me up a bit. I've got a distance from it. Sometimes what I'm writing is more important to me than the rest of my life. It's more important to me that I'm writing well than anything else.
With singing, the name of the game is to make yourself believable. When somebody hears you sing a song, and they say, 'Oh, that must have happened to him,' that's when you know you're transmitting. It's like being a good actor. You make people feel things, emotions and what not.
I have no physical genius about me. I cant dribble a ball and run at the same time, I cant do lay-ups - Im not an athlete. But my experience as a kid was, I was made fun of so much that what I did then, is, I wouldnt participate. And I think I cheated myself out of a lot of fun.
I really do prioritise humour in people. It's a sign of intelligence. One of the most important things I heard that moulded me was Derek and Clive. That sense of release when I heard them for the first time, crying and laughing, was akin to seeing Sonic Youth for the first time.
Five women working together is never going to be easy. It's a lot. But God is so incredible, in terms of the timing, because we are all married with kids, in our late 30s and 40s. It's a different stage in our lives. It's not about who is going to be the one that's going to pop.
With musical theatre, although there are rules, they're so different to the ones I feel like I have accidentally been ingrained with writing pop music. The main point is to tell the story. You just have to make sure the character's voice is strong and the storytelling is strong.
I think "God" is an off-putting word. I don't think there's a name for this. I think it's a presence that is best for us, but unfortunately, it can't intervene if we don't ask it, and religion has us talking to the wall because the god that religion is selling isn't the reality.
I think musicians should stay off television generally. I get asked all the time. Those shows are just promoting insipid comedies. Who watches those shows? And whoever does I don't think my music would speak to those people. I don't even want those people to hear what I'm doing.
'Rolling Stone,' my first single, was only a hit in Portugal, but when we recorded my second single, 'Can The Can,' I got that hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck feeling, and I knew it would be huge. It topped the charts in the U.K. and Australia in 1973, and I got my first gold disc.
My fans don't feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I'm going through now, they'll hear about it on a record someday. They'll hear the real story. There's a little bit of lag time. It's not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it's much more accurate.
When I first started drinking, it was working for me. It was great. Like when you're doing a gig and you're in a band and you're in the truck and there's nothing to do in the truck and the gigs are all the same and the hotels are all the same...it's the hotels, the car, the gig.
When I was young, my father told me I was living in a dream world. At the time, he was trying to straighten me up to fly right. Now I treasure the part of my life that is a dream world - the love of my children, my music - these loves can put you in a dreamy place. I embrace it.
People in the Middle East may consider the U.S. an evil hegemony that has tainted their culture, but when I look at the growth of racial and ethnic tolerance and understanding in my generation in the U.S., and see those sentiments make it around the world, it makes me feel proud.
I see the merit in religion, and I see the need for faith and hope and sometimes people who are more snide look at people who are religious, particularly people in rock bands, and they'll say, 'Oh that's dumb, you believe in whatever,' but I think everybody believes in something.
I hate it when people don't recognize the work of women as being universal, or having any import to the world at large, as opposed to men's work, which is generally tends to be seen as more universal - men's writing about their own experience tends to be put in a broader context.
What's really interesting is when you get a brand-new wave that has no connection to anything else. It always reflects society. The flappers would cut the dresses and make them looser, they smoked, their hair was short. It was a rebellion against the corset and the Edwardian era.
I was a nursery school teacher, and I worked with youth groups. I loved that job. It was exhausting, but you got a lot back - all their purity and insight and innocence is so on the surface, and they're so unrepressed; they'd really scream at you and then give you a massive kiss.
I usually speak with all my drummers so that I write my songs with them in mind, and we'll have bass sounds, choir sounds, and then you can multi-task with all these orchestral sounds. Through the magic medium of technology, I can play all kinds of sounds - double bass and stuff.
Do I ever think Gossip will be really massive in America? No, I don't think it'll happen - and that's fine. It's kind of nice because I get to experience everything at once. I get to come home and it not be weird, like in Paris or something. It is nice to be completely anonymous.
To avoid sounding like a cliche, I won't say I want to get proposed to in Paris, but Paris. I want it to happen somewhere public where people can be excited that I just got proposed to, and everyone applauds, like in a restaurant - that, or somewhere totally secluded... in Paris.
In pop music, the public usually see the results - the hit records, the Grammy Awards performances, the concert tours - but not all the work that goes into getting into the spotlight. And not everyone realizes that, even if you have a lot of talent, chances are you won't make it.
Grab a guitar, put some kind of strings on it, a banjo string, then a violin string, then a guitar string, tune it any way you want, and make some noise, and see what you get. And work on it until you get something that you think is interesting. That's all there is to art for me.
Everything made so much sense. This is the beauty of the Qur'an; it asks you to reflect and reason....When I read the Qur'an further, it talked about prayer, kindness and charity. I was not a Muslim yet, but I felt the oÂnly answer for me was the Qur'an and God had sent it to me.
Considering the fact that I have been in the spotlight more or less since I was 18, there is an aspect of normality to my public profile, which I have grown to live with. As much as I would like to disappear into the crowd, my work won't let me - difficult as it is for my family.
This message in me has been like, you know, "Every day, Lord, teach me to say, 'Here I am, send me.'" No matter how uncomfortable it is, no matter how awkward it could be," no matter - I don't want to put his will through my sieve, you know, through my lens. I just want His will.
But if we hide ourselves away, afraid to grow and learn, we might wake up in the flames of the ignorance that burns and we'll never be much more than only casualties of war in a struggle we can't win if we have no faith to begin. We've got to tip the lid and let some sunlight in.
I want to be like one of those little fainting goats that get scared and then just fall over. I want to go and go and then drop dead in the middle of something I'm loving to do. And if that doesn't happen, if I wind up sitting in a wheelchair, at least I'll have my high heels on.
When I talk to a man, I can always tell what he's thinking by where he is looking. If he is looking at my eyes, he is looking for intelligence. If he is looking at my mouth, he is looking for wisdom. But if he is looking anywhere else except my chest he's looking for another man.
Hip-hop is not something we do, it's something we live. It's the way we dress, the way we talk... everybody bobbing to the same beat. It's a culture, and you have to find your own place in that culture. Top 10 or Top 40 can't dictate that. They can only dictate what's marketable.
You have to do all you can as a parent to stop your kid from doing all the craziness that's going on in the world. And although I still have music that's saying one thing, I still let them know what it is, and I'm not doing anything in my music that I wouldn't tell my kids about.
'Wanted' is about a girl I was friends with, but at the time it was teetering on the edge of something more. I wanted to show her that I really cared about her. 'Wanted' was my way of saying, 'we're friends and have a great foundation, and this could be something really special.'
This generation is so dead. You ask a kid, 'What are you doing this Saturday?' and they'll be playing video games or watching cable, instead of building model cars or airplanes or doing something creative. Kids today never say, 'Man, I'm really into remote-controlled steamboats.'
The songs I write should only be gauged by what other writers or peers are doing today. If the barometer for all songwriters was to match his body of work, then anyone you might mention alive or dead is a failure. But I've learned to not be too hung up on what's fair or not fair.
I hear pounding feet in the streets below And the women crying and the children know That there's something wrong And it's hard to believe that love will prevail Oh it won't rain all the time The sky won't fall forever And though the night seems long Your tears won't fall forever
I wanted a child, and there was no way I could get pregnant under the stress of 18-hour work days and live TV. When you're somebody who's used to making a decision about what they want to do and getting it and achieving it, when your body fails you, it's a whole other experience.
I used to think being in the West would be incredible and then when I was nine my parents moved us to Belfast. I was initially amazed by little things - in toyshops you could actually play with the toys, the schools were more colourful and there were so many magazines everywhere.
The nice way to meet a guy is through getting to know them first. Then you can really judge their personality. What I can't take is meeting someone, going on a date, getting to know them, then finding out they're a complete psycho - 'Great, I've just wasted all this time on you!'
There's a difference between a pop star and an artist. Pop stars have to be perfect all the time; an artist is allowed, on occasion, to suck. And I put myself in that category because I sometimes suck. I'm not trying to please the masses. It's not going to happen, so I don't try.
I feel like sometimes, when I'm singing a song like 'Moment of Forever,' that it goes both to your significant other and to the audience, and was it wonderful for you, you know? I think the best love songs I've written work on that level, like 'Help Me Make It Through the Night.'
I think the thing I really got from Ginsberg was that you can tell a story through kind of painting pictures with words. And when I found out that you could have a profession doing that, it was thrilling to me. It just became my passion immediately, playing with words and poetry.
I was never successful in a noteworthy way, no one wrote about me, and I didn't have recognition. I've met a lot of musicians along the way who thought I was good, and they knew that was important to me. Having a simple career as a musician who liked music was good enough for me.
Give me my freedom for as long as I be All I ask of livin' is to have no chains on me All I ask of livin' is to have no chains on me And all I ask of dyin' is to go naturally... And when I die, and when I'm gone There'll be one child born, in our world To carry on, to carry on...
When I first started doing the quieter, more acoustic material in Swans, there was a lot of derision and outright hatred from the audience and press, just as in the early days of Swans when we were rejected outright because of the bludgeoning, single-minded violence of the music.
I am going to say something I have never said before and this is the truth. I have no reason to lie to you and God knows I am telling the truth. I think all my success and fame and I have wanted it, I have wanted it because I wanted to be loved. That's all. That's the real truth.
When you come into a pre-existing situation, you gotta have your own thing going. You gotta be really strong about it, and you gotta look at the older material in an aggressive way - 'I'm gonna make this mine somehow.' You need to put your imprint on the situation that you're in.