Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Nothing is more frustrating to me than putting a song on an album and regret putting it on there. I'm excited that there are no songs on 'Tailgates & Tanlines' that I'm iffy about.
I've always been inspired by Genet, Henry Miller and Hubert Selby, Jr., who taught me that you've got to tell a bigger truth in whatever you're doing, but the truth is not popular.
I've always been more in control of my professional life than my personal life. Although I'm a strong woman, when I fall in love I just give myself 100 percent. I become secondary.
This is for all of you out there tonight, reaching for a dream - don't ever give up! Never ever listen to anyone, when they try to discourage you, because they do that, believe me!
I think I'm a man about the things I need to be a man about, but I get paid to play, pretty much. I do what I love for a living, and I also get to build BMX bikes in my spare time.
We've had a great change. Dr King saw to that. I was so grateful to see the 'colored only' signs come off the water fountains and bathrooms in the south. But the struggle lives on.
For me, as a music fan, visuals kind of steal away the purity of the song. My instinct is not to provide a visual to go with a piece of music. But here's MTV. It's really powerful.
There are people that very strongly identify themselves as gay and then lesbian, and then I think there are a lot of people who are kind of some percentage or some version of that.
If I am good, people compliments me that my voice is like a CD, but whenever my voice condition is not as well and do some mistakes....I tend to sacrifice myself for my next album.
As long as you're growing in your profession and you're respected, you're going to stay as clean as you can, because you've got something that you love that you don't want to lose.
Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.
A productive mistake is: (1) made in the service of mission and vision; (2) acknowledged as a mistake; (3) learned from; (4) considered valuable; (5) shared for the benefit of all.
I experienced firsthand what it means to be poor, what it means to go hungry, and that, I think, may be the reason, the root cause of why I'm able to work so hard, even these days.
Early on, I was into David Bowie. Then someone in the band suggested I try a Bryan Ferry type of thing. That's when I started wearing three-piece suits. It wasn't unnatural for me.
I want to connect music to its highest power - which is heightening consciousness and affecting people's reality. That can't be done in normal ways, not according to my experience.
Although sometimes I know it seems impossible, there ain't no need in drowning in your sorrow. If things are as bad as they can be, you can be sure there'll be a brighter tomorrow.
I'm very proud that a woman, has finally been chosen as a candidate for the president of the United States, because I always felt women should be treated like first-class citizens.
I didn't worry about it because I kind of felt I left a good message and memory with the people in terms of my work, and I always felt with a good record, I could always come back.
Being gone for so long and coming back into the game, I'm the type of person to reinvent myself pretty often and I can adapt to pretty much whatever genre is popping at the moment.
Music was such a love of mine. It was my way of exploring life, my internal world. To be honest, I don't really know why or why not. It's just seems life without it would be death.
People always tell me I'm too modest, and that I'm allowed to tell myself now and then that I'm good at something. Well okay then, the bathroom is very (beautiful) clean right now.
I wear a lot of different hats - from writer to producer and artist. We all do 5 or 6 jobs, everything from creating our own graphic design to actually recording and the whole bit.
I have the motto that says, 'Whatever you see in your closet that you like, pick it and wear it.' It's not just your closet, but just your life. Whatever catches your eye. Pick it.
Love shouldn't be about jealousy or anything like that. It should be about commitment and being able to trust that person. If you can't have that from the get-go, there's a problem.
When I was 6 years old, I was in a rock band that was horrible called 'Dead End.' The name kind of described us. People liked us; we would go and perform at coffee houses and stuff.
I think a singer is an athlete. I've always tried to stay fit. Until my knee said, "Uh-uh," I was jogging. Then I started walking. They don't like walking a lot, but I'll push them.
It's always been about making music. I've never gotten caught up with the trappings. You can't get caught up in the limousines and the chicks. The most important thing is the music.
I don't write all my stuff. Everybody always thinks that. But in just about every album I've ever had has been about 50-50 songs I've written or co-written and other people's songs.
I've not been anywhere in Central or South America before. The closest I've been is Cancun and Cabo in Mexico. But I think I'd love the culture, the sprit, and the energy of Brazil.
Other lands became a larder full of all the good things All we had to do was go and take Blood the colour of the rain that grew our wicked harvest Black the colour icing on our cake
We definitely didn't want it to be anything like our first or second records. We wanted to experiment more than we ever had and take any new idea and run with it as far as we could.
Me don't dip on nobody's side. Me don't dip on the black man's side, not the white man's side. Me dip on God's side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.
When I started having a couple of beers and loosening up, I realized how many years I had wasted going back to my hotel room alone when I could have gone and just had a beer or two.
We were raised right in the heart of the Bogside. Everything was so bad at the time that Mammy would bring us to the pantomime, circus, concerts because we were so confined at home.
The best advice he gave me was to carry on. It would have been difficult to set foot back inside a TV studio if I hadn't carried on - I don't know if I would have ever gone back in.
I've tried to move on with my life and my career for the last two years and do my own thing, and 'American Idol' and FOX, they've just been making it really tough for me to do that.
I've kind of walked into a realm where it's paid off for all the hard work that I've put into it, and I get to bless my family. And that's the one thing I love doing. I love giving.
There is an apprenticeship system in jazz. You teach the young ones. So even if the musicians weren't personally that likable, they felt an obligation to help the younger musicians.
The transformation that happens when a young artist goes on the road - you put the acoustic guitar down and start to play the electric a little louder - it gets a little bit ragged.
While Paul Simon is revered, I don't think people get how deep he is. I love the guy. He comes from that early street-harmony, first-generation type of rock and rollers. He gets it.
I didn't have big movie offers, or any big agents wanting to work with me. I had to go grassroots, start at the bottom and go on 150 auditions before someone finally gave me a shot.
Look from the blind man's eye.... You can paint the picture, the way you like about this world, so why not think positive and make this world more beautiful for yourself and others?
It's about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story and all kinds of sonic goodness.
I think people really want to see the real because the world is portrayed at such a low level that if you come out with a real wholesome show, people don't want to see that anymore.
I honestly don't know what criteria makes someone right-wing or left-wing anymore. The boundaries of those definitions seem to be in a state of flux. I'm not socialist, I know that.
When I'm acting, I'm in a different place, singing is the last thing on my mind, and when I'm on stage, there's no acting at all involved, not even presentation, it's just who I am.
Maybe because I can't even put together an IKEA desk, I've never been tempted to think of my own poems as built objects - but I do sometimes imagine them as mathematical constructs.
I've been looking around, and I noticed something: how much you really need to be loved. Ambition isn't just a desperate quest for positions or money. It's just love - lots of love.
My mom did this in the '90s. She'd put a bandana in her hair, cutoff jeans and throw flannel, and I just remember looking at her thinking she was the most beautiful supermodel ever.
You never have to second guess a person or your feelings and instincts about that person if you pay attention to their actions, not solely their words - actions always speak louder.