Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I feel quite connected to the past, and my memory. Everything that I've ever done I can still relate to, and feel connected to it in a way. There's no part of my life that I look at and go, 'I don't recognize that person at all.
I stayed in L.A. long enough to get on my feet, and then I moved back to New York. The reason I moved here was that I don't feel warm outside of a city; it's too barren in the suburbs, and L.A. is a suburb. Here, it felt active.
There's one more thing I want to say. It's a touchy subject. Black beauty. Black sensuality. We live in a culture where the beauty of black people isn't always as celebrated as other types. I'd like to help change that if I can!
My idol was Marilyn Monroe, who was a size 16, I think, and curvy in all the right places. I will never be stick thin. I remember a shoot where I had to get into these tiny hot pants, and I thought, 'God, I wish I hadn't eaten.'
When I did 'Dancing with the Stars' I did lose an awful lot of weight and I think at the time everybody was sort of alarmed by it. You can eat anything and it is still dropping off you when you are doing that amount of exercise.
Well a lot of females complain about getting into the business, like men producers always wanna get (in bed) with them before, but it wasn't like that for me, I was good from start so I had no problems when it came to recording.
When someone like me, who is in the entertainment industry, which is a huge falsity of its own, tries to talk outwardly about politics, especially as a woman, I receive a lot of 'Shut up - just sing and dance for us, you idiot.'
Whoever is playing with me, they participate in the arrangement; I learned from Craig Street to really pool the stories and the skill and the voices of everybody around you on the bandstand to build an arrangement in the moment.
The reason people think I look good now is because I was never a beauty as a wee girl. And thank heavens. It's frightening to get old anyway, but if your looks were the cornerstone of your life, well, it would be very difficult.
It's never been about what we want others to see: it's about what we want to see; it's about what we want to do. We only have a career because of our fans, but we have to keep making music for the reason we started making music.
And I began to tell little anecdotes that had happened to me, and people would laugh. And I began to like that, you know. But I knew that, 'cause I'd do that in school, but I wouldn't do it out there in front of all them people.
There are obviously so many artists that are very inspiring, but I can't say that they like - that I have someone in mind that is like a creative direction of where I want to go as an artist. I think I'm just doing my own thing.
I've never been able to relate to many people. I've always been the outcast child. I don't follow the rules. That's kind of how I do everything. Through my music, I've found a place in the world where I'm accepted, so I'm happy.
In fact, because of this deep desire for peace, the ruling class leaders of this land, from 1945 on, stepped up the hysteria and propaganda to drive into American minds the false notion that danger threatened them from the East.
I try to stay away from yes-men in my crew of immediate friends and peers. You got people that will tell you you're the greatest ever, but I need people that can tell me where I need to improve. I can respect the honest opinion.
You don't want to say somebody did a great job of acting. You want to say, "Where did he find that person? How did he get that factory worker to come out of the factory and be on camera?" You want to believe that person is real.
So I went to Miami in '74 with my family and while I was there it became obvious that we needed money and we needed to do something, because my family, we left without anything really, and we didn't have any money to begin with.
My kitchen is my baby. I don't have kids, so cooking is sort of like my child. Renovating my kitchen has allowed me to channel my creativity the way parents work on a nursery. The centerpiece is my vintage 1950s Wedgewood stove.
I think I bring the songs that aren't about me or related to me to life. It's like the song 'How Do I Let A Good Man Down?' Let me tell you, I didn't write that song - because if I have a good man, I ain't going to let him down.
All my success seems to come straight away, and it's not until later that I get to appreciate it. Like with 'Popstars,' I won the competition, and now I look back and go, 'God, I was lucky to have number-one singles and albums.'
Agrarian Anabaptists, Christian Scientists, and Samurai are among the rare examples of renunciation stemming from an unwillingness to sacrifice the spiritual qualities of community life. Evidently there is no separate salvation.
Any prediction worth its weigh would consider the spiritual, material, and unintended consequences of introducing a new technology to the world. It would proceed from the kind of understanding Chellis articulated: Life is Whole.
We cannot learn freedom and responsibility within the confines of our own species. We cannot understand life and death and what they are for in exclusively human terms. Without that which is wild, the world becomes a cell block.
As sonic journalists, we were increasingly becoming bombarded with global images. It was the early idea of the cut-up, the idea of images being juxtapositioned, which we were doing with sound. That was the early days of samples.
The woman I am currently crazy about was a vegetarian for a year until I started dating her. As is the case with most vegetarians, she had never eaten properly prepared meat, only commercially packaged or otherwise abused flesh.
That one person that says "I heard your stuff and I really like this." It really touches my heart because it's what I love to do. I'd rather do it for the people than do it for a machine, a company that just wants to make money.
I've been very lucky, man. Like you say, though, the writing is what kicked all that in and made it possible. It's something that I have always been very thankful of, that that kicked in, and that I could be free with the music.
DJ Sliink is amazing, and his production is on the next level. There are a lot of EDM producers that Id like to work with, not for the sake of having an engineered record, but for the fact that I love their production and music.
So I went in front of the judge, and I had my St. Jude prayer book in my pocket and my St. Jude medal. And I'm standing there and that judge said I was found guilty, so he sentenced me to what the law prescribed: one to 14 years.
Sometimes in life, when bad things happen to us, or things aren't going our way, or we're faced with a challenge or a problem, it's how you look at the problem; it's how you do it to change your mindset, to dilute the negativity.
Where I've arrived now is the product of mixing the very straight with the very exploratory; there's a fine line between the two, although it tends to be getting straighter and straighter because my songwriting is getting better.
I'm tired of people disturbing the peace, getting on the radio and sounding a hot mess. If I can tell what the note really is, why let them go to the note they think it is? I've got that mama vibe. I don't look at it with an ego.
You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that's so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end.
When you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God's eyes or even in just your eyes, then your life is forever changed; you see something that you can't un-see.
It's a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That's where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.
Unlike the rest of everyone I hang around with, I don't drink, so I remember what happened after shows. And I have never hit on anyone after a show, I'm not that kind of person. Even if I was attracted to someone, I'd be too shy.
The piano is where everything starts and ends. Everything is based off of it. If you understand that, you wind up understanding a lot more in all other instruments. For me, it had always been something important to try and learn.
I got along better with the guys than with the girls. Only two girls came up to talk to me. Later I found out they were telling their boyfriends, 'If you talk to her, I'll kill you.' It's always rough with that high school thing.
There's loads of things you can do to make things easy for your throat, you can drink a bit of lemon and hot water couple of spoons of honey, you can gargle with port, I've done it a couple of times myself - but don't swallow it!
I can't stand things that are poorly made or shoddily conceived. I feel like I'm being insulted when something is poorly designed, poorly made. It's like whoever made that thing didn't respect the rest of us enough to do it well.
I know God loves me. I tell people all the time I'm one of his favorite childs. I had to believe in something bigger than me - bigger than man. I had to believe that God would send somebody across my path to keep my dreams alive.
I've had some shows where I really plan out what I'm going to say. Then I've had other shows where I'm like, 'Take a sip of the Ole Smoky Moonshine and just let it be natural and cross your fingers that you say the right things.'
Always surround yourself with people who are better than you. If you're hanging around bad people, they're going to start bringing you down . . . But, if you surround yourself with good people, they're going to be pulling you up.
To me, obstacles in life build character. You have to be able to overcome adversity in order to succeed and appreciate the simple things life has to offer... that's where most of my inspiration for writing and singing comes from.
People are just afraid of things too much … Sure, evil exists, extremism exists. Somebody could commit a hate crime and hurt me. But they could do the same just because I'm black. They could do the same just because I'm American.
When people nowadays say that Elvis was the first white guy to sound black, I have to shake my head; what can you do? At the time of 'That's My Desire' 1947 they were saying that I was the only white guy around who sounded black.
When you're young, you want to convince everyone that you're right and they're wrong. As you get older, it's not important if you are right or wrong, it's important that you work together with other people and get something done.
You've got to try a little kindness, yes show a little kindness Just shine your light for everyone to see. And if you try a little kindness, Then you'll overlook the blindness Of narrow-minded people on the narrow-minded streets.
Ages ago, my girlfriend had this little park near her house, with a bridge running over a stream and I set up all these candles on the bridge. But when I called her and told her she said it was too dark and she wasn't coming out.
I think, you know, we entered the 'The X Factor' in the U.K., and you kind of want someone who knows what they're talking about to tell you if you're any good or not instead of just your mum saying that you like it when you sing.