Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As a child, all I knew was that people kept asking me to sing, and because I liked to please, I would sing. It wasn't until my dad told me that my singing made him happy that I began to think my voice might be good.
I do not understand where the idea came from that opera is only for privileged people, I am as happy singing before 70,000 people at the Millennium Stadium, as I am in front of a few hundred in a small concert hall.
You know, songs often have a very coloured past. They might have something about them but it still doesn't work, so someone else adds a bit, and someone else adds a bit so perhaps one day I'll know its full history.
I'm separated by other performers with whom I might be lumped, since what I say is so intensely personal. I'm anti-art and anti-poetry. As much as possible, I want to inflict my personal pain on the rest of society.
We're so humbled and lucky to be in a position where we've been a four-piece for over 15 years. We're signed to a major label. We're on our fourth record on a major label. We've won a Grammy. We've toured the world.
I think certain people like to torture me because they think I've had it easier than I actually have and they think: 'Oh, she's got this, she's got that, she's always had everything perfect,' and it's sooo not true.
The other thing is that doctors test only the most common estrogen level. There are three kinds of estrogen in a woman but they don't test the other two because they are so rare; mine was the third kind of estrogen.
I was a teenage idol, but not the one that the girls would put up on their walls, like Fabian and Frankie Avalon. I was more cerebral, like a Roy Orbison or a Buddy Holly. I was one of the few who could write songs.
I think that you get the mood of a song stronger if you get it right that way. On the other hand, you put some songs out live and they don't catch flight. They just flop. It is hard to tell until they are out there.
A man will treat a woman almost exactly the way he treats his own interior feminine. In fact, he hasn't the ability to see a woman, objectively speaking, until he has made some kind of peace with his interior woman.
Suicide was such a formative band for me, so influential in the development of my taste. They're one of those bands that operated in absolute isolation for so long that they developed a completely unique world view.
Even in my really bad, drugged-out days, I didn't go away. I still toured, still did interviews. I never gave up the fight. That's why I'm who I am today, because I didn't leave. And I think I made the right choice.
In Fleetwood Mac I have a persona, I call myself the 'Spider Woman'. I try to imagine myself putting on a spider mask. I become very subdued and quieter, I don't move so fast., I'm in a state of suspended animation.
I think country music is about honesty. Any art has to have honesty to start with, as the core of it. I mean, they're just going to manipulate you in one way or the other, but there has to honesty at the core of it.
I haven't become an American! Having a house in LA is just where the house is. It's just a convenience thing living there. I carry Wales around inside me. I'd consider moving back there one day. I never really left.
We [actors] are so lucky to do jobs that fulfill us and make us happy. We don't go to work thinking okay, we're working to put food in the fridge. We are doing that too, but we're working because we love what we do.
When I wouldn't leave home without my blue contacts or when I was bleaching my hair, I didn't have the language to articulate that I was trying to assimilate to whiteness. If anything, I was trying to "look normal."
I tour a lot and interview a lot. I'm on the Internet and doing stuff. I go out and promote. I've got a bass drum and a sandwich sign and a washboard. You just have to shout louder and louder that you're still alive.
I have seen and heard comedians who had really funny 'stuff' but yet could not make the people laugh; then, again - I have seen others whose stuff was anything but humorous, and the audience would howl with laughter.
I've been a lot of places, and my wife, Denise, she likes a lot of the fancy restaurants. I'm more of a basic eater. I still go into Cracker Barrel. Those are the kind of people who like the kind of music I'm making.
When my son was in his teens, he was a really fine drummer. He was asked in an interview if he would consider going into the business. And he said, 'Why would I ever go into the business that took my mother from me?'
Being the Queen is not all about singing and being a diva is not all about singing. It has much to do with your service to people. And your social contributions to your community and your civic contributions as well.
When I started out, even though you had your rhythm section, they were big horn sections, strings, live people laying on every part of the floor in the studio waiting for their chance to get on that one little track.
When you're playing music, say for instance, you're playing a part of the band and you're looking at your music, your horn is down into the stand. This way, it's up and it goes right on out to the audience, you know?
The bars could not hold me. Force could not control me. They tried to keep me down, but Jah put I around. Yes, I've been accused. Wrongly abused. But through the powers of the Most High, they've got to turn me loose.
Well, what we know Is not what they tell us We're not ignorant, I mean it, And they just cannot touch us Through the powers of the Most-High We keep on surfacin' Thru the powers of the Most-High We keep on survivin'.
Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don't complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don't bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!
That person who's going to a concert for a nostalgic reason, we're not really going to placate. We still play three or four hits every night. Now, we don't play them like the record. We try to find new ways to do it.
This sounds weird, but some of my concerts have been kind of dangerous sometimes. I've had a few girls actually sent to the hospital because they faint and all that kind of stuff, which is really, really weird to me.
I just realized that I was putting my identity in things that don't matter. I think our generation especially, but our nation as well, we look at what Hollywood throws at us, and I just think some of us are confused.
There were a lot of R&B groups that were my heroes, but the funny thing about my career and the way it went and where it went, at first I didn't really want to do pop music. I was a little bit more into jazz and R&B.
When we were trying to get 'Jersey Boys' off the ground, I'd get, 'The Four Seasons? Who's going to care? There's the Beatles, there's the Rolling Stones.' But people know those stories. Here was a story no one knew.
By the law of averages, there has to be life elsewhere. The universe is so huge, and I don't think God would have created this whole big huge cosmos and just say there's only going to be life on Earth, and that's it.
'Punk rock' is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, the bodies, the hearts, the souls, the time and the minds of young men who give everything they have to it.
If I get even five per cent of my ideas out and documented before I die, I'll be lucky. I'm not in danger of running out of riffs or ideas anytime soon. They overwhelm me and it's hard to find time to deal with them.
Social change really cannot happen unless people are willing to take a risk, and they were. And I was so moved by that, and of course by the way that he spoke, that made a huge dent in my belief system and my spirit.
There's very little I can sing now. When I asked my first voice teacher, who was the best one, "When will I know when to stop singing?" he said, "Your voice will tell you." And it is very, very difficult to sing now.
Could I see myself with a British boyfriend? Absolutely. The way they wear their pants is so cute. Guys don't do it in America. Their style is cute. I just feel like Brits are honest - period. And that's what I like.
One thing that I had to remember in my personal journey in the music industry and coming up in the music industry was how many times I was told no. I was signed, I was dropped, I was signed, and I was put on a shelf.
It's funny to see my friends going through that middle-age thing about losing their hair. I went through it in college. They all say, "Oh my God, I'm getting old. I'm never getting laid again." Shut up. Yes, you are.
When we all start to wake up and realize that our comforts are fleeting, and more money is never going to save this world, maybe, just maybe, will we be able to return back to the grace of America's principal values.
You have to change musically. Bubble gum pop was good for the first time you have sex. They didn't want to give the OK on some really good music. It was the frustration of being signed to that label. I was depressed.
As far as I was concerned the important thing was that the music was getting the attention as well as me so it was always a great way to get more of the public to connect with classical music, and opera particularly.
In the Troubadour days, it was all those songwriters that I hung around with all the time, so I could get songs and find out what was going on. So we all knew each other, and we just carried each other's word around.
When I was little - like in preschool - I was very shy, but whenever I went on stage I just exploded. Ever since then I knew that this was what I wanted to do. Music has always been a part of me, music is my passion.
I want to do movies, but I want to do something that's good. I don't want to make any more films until I feel that I'm ready for it. I want to have good work, and a very elegant life. I believe you get what you want.
Acting is something where you have to completely remove yourself. So, do I find acting easy? Absolutely no! Do I want to do more of it? Do I enjoy doing it? Do I feel appreciative to get this opportunity? Absolutely!
I was a bicycle messenger when Alkaline Trio was formed as a way to make ends meet and I've just always been a cyclist and then I got really into - through messengering - I got really into road bikes and fixed gears.
I was 20 years old. I had moved to Los Angeles from Columbus, Ohio. I was working as a piano salesman - a terrible piano salesman. I couldn't sell them. I could demonstrate them, but people wouldn't buy them from me.
We have to fight for what's right the same way the brothers and sisters that came before us did. The ultimate example, and there are many others, was The Stonewall Inn. They were pushed until they could take no more.