Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Most conservatives just want to turn back the clock to a time before the income tax - 100 years or so. I would like to turn the clock back thousands of years to a time when people lived in small communities and took care of each other.
I learned by transcribing songs out of the Library of Congress collection in Washington where I was working. I got a job when I just turned twenty in 1939 and Alan [Lomax] needed some help. I listened to hundreds of records every week.
There's a lot of things that go on when you're on tour that cannot be controlled. I'm not even talking about myself, but of course there's sexual activity and drugs, fighting and language; it is certainly not a place to raise a family.
I just remember standing there, singing with the headphones on and the strings playing, just how wonderful that felt. But we so rarely got to go out and do it. Obviously, we don't carry a 70-80-piece orchestra with us when we do shows.
Maybe you're going to a concert thinking you're not going to hear anything but music. But you may walk away from there with an answer to a problem that you're carrying around with you that you didn't think you were going to hear about.
You're just one of the guys who fills a suit, and that's what's drilled into you by the record company and the management - 'You're lucky to have it. Now shut your mouth.' I get where that comes from, but it takes time to shake it off.
Right now we're in the middle of a cultural war between the Muslims and the Western world. The politicians get in the way, but if you put two people together in a room, they can talk it out and work it out, just like Anna and the King.
Why shouldn't rap be esoteric, able to take in current events, history and criticism? I guess it's this old idea of containment - that rappers, because they're black, can't and shouldn't aspire to look outside the ghetto for influence.
I think we saw our reaction coming from Dada, but at the same time, it formed into punk, which was very much a reaction to the social conditions. That was part of it for us as well, and that's why we were kind of swept along with punk.
Time cast a spell on you but you won't forget me, I know I could have loved you, but you would not let me. I'll follow you down 'til the sound of my voice will haunt you, you'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you
I would have found something because I love to entertain people. I had the option to take the rest of the year off. But I said the songs on my last solo album, '24 Karat Gold,' mean so much to me. I need to get out there and sing them.
Prince would have been the person I thought would live forever because of the way he took care of himself - not counting the fact he jumped off risers in 6-inch heels. He probably had fractures from his feet all the way up to his head.
Lindsey [Buckingham] and I went up to Aspen and we went to somebody's incredible house and they had a piano and I had my guitar with me and I went in their living room, looking out over the incredible Aspen sky and I wrote 'Landslide.'
The first record we put out on Fueled by Ramon, 'The Papercut Chronicles,' we had no idea what the term 'producer' meant. It was just us writing songs, and we are trying to go back to that - singing in a room and vibing off each other.
I think about food all the time, so making peace with eating is a daily battle for me. I won't say I've completely figured it out, but I will say that right now, I win that battle more days than I lose it, and I believe that's the key.
I had to fight tooth and nail to stay in an industry where I had a lot of problems. I've gone through a lot in my life and have somehow managed by my faith and some great people around me to continue on this journey where I'm at today.
They're going to clear cut your best thoughts for the sake of profit unless you learn to resist, because the profit system follows the path of least resistance and following the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked!
I think sometimes people believe what they want to believe. I personally thought I was going to marry Elton John. I was so out of my mind that I really thought that someday I'd meet him and we'd fall in love and live happily ever after.
I love going to the beach in the tropics and doing whatever I do - surfing, swimming or being - and the glow when I get a tan that deepens. I walk around with red and gold in my skin and feel like the most beautiful thing on the planet!
My upbringing was in the church. We had to attend regularly. And, of course, the church provided a training ground for me, so to speak, as a young vocalist and certainly gave me all of the spiritual values that I needed as a young lady.
So it's mix and match. Hold your line when you really feel something you're saying is wonderful and you really want to get this point across and prove it to your partner by just throwing it into the tape and letting it speak for itself.
Why these people who want to do so much good for everyone, who call themselves government and this and that, why them say you must not use the herb? You see, them say you must not use the herb because it makes you a rebel. Against what?
I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that's why they're so relatable.
[My hair] creates this Tarzanesque, likeable bad-boy image. It says, 'I am a wild child. I will take you on a Harley ride, then make passionate love to you. And should you be attacked by a lion or an idiot at a bar, I will protect you.'
The most important thing for me personally is that I can connect with other people through my music. I want my album to be like a trip that people can take with me. My music is like me stripped naked because I open myself up completely.
Obviously spending my teenage years in music, and in popular music, I wanted to continue this career, but in a way that allows me to dictate it and create it myself as opposed to relying on third party or more corporate decision making.
I get such joy out of performing for people, and you can tell whether they like you or they don't like you the minute you walk out on the stage. And they don't even have to tell me that they had a good time. I know they had a good time.
I learned by listening to other people sing and doing impressions of them. And there are things no one can ever teach you, like phrasing. By listening to Sinatra, for instance - you felt that everything he sang had happened in his life.
I'm going to write, and after two years, when I've quit touring, if a special event comes up that I want to do, by all means I will do it, but as far as a structured tour goes, at the last date of 2014 goes, that will be it for touring.
More having to do whatever anybody said you had to do. I couldn't really do anything on my own. But as I got older and then came to America and then Grace became my name, it somehow freed me. All of a sudden, I can be this other person.
Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs and bring about my interpretation of them.
I have no inhibitions about smoking or drinking, but I think too much of my voice to place it in jeopardy. I have spent many good years in training and cultivating it, and I would be foolish to do anything which might impair or ruin it.
My attitude goes back to my childhood. I used to audition for theatrical roles, and you can't stand out in a room full of ambitious eight-year-old girls by acting the wallflower. I realised then that I couldn't do things half-heartedly.
C.S. Lewis says that fiction is able to sneak past the watchful dragons of religion. It becomes more powerful to speak in poetry. The song goes straight to the heart while the numbers and the math of it will never be able to reach that.
I love it in Warrington. The kids are settled and I've spent GBP10k on a new garden. If I run away it's like I've got something to hide, which I haven't. I'm a big fan of Warrington, but not a big fan of Warrington people at the moment.
When you're on stage, the audience becomes your other half. It's the ultimate high you can reach as a musician - an incredible feeling. And no matter where I am it's still the same; there's a reason we call music the universal language.
I want to make people feel good about who they are regardless of who they are or where they come from or the color of their skin or what their family acts like or what they look like. I am all about acceptance of others and of yourself.
The play is one of the very few pieces of great dramatic and comic writing that I have read in a long, long time. I was drawn to it because of the power of the writing, which gives me the actor a chance to explore many facets of myself.
Because we have so much eye candy and mind candy, spending so much time trying to pay the rent, all of this conspires to keep us from thinking too hard or taking action from that. Our time is stolen. So much of our daily life is stolen.
I wore Chuck Taylors for a couple shows, and the second show I wore the Chuck Taylors, that was the one and only time I fell onstage. I haven't really bit it onstage in high heels yet. It will happen. It's not about if, it's about when.
When we began to tour, no one expected me to be a part of the band, so I used that as a tool, and would start the set off-stage or in the audience, as a surprise, because no one expected this little girl to get up and rock the way I do.
The songs that I'm able to write are the songs I'm able to write, whatever they may be. The path I've cut for myself is pop music - love-y pop music. That's what I enjoy doing. And I don't think I'm going to get sick of it anytime soon.
Women are so strong and knowledgeable. You know, instead of competing with each other, I would love to complete each other. Take away that wall of competition and say, 'Hey, let's just all get together and help each other be brilliant.'
There's always somebody in your life you know that just, somehow, you know, they're just that borderline sociopath that just wants what they want and doesn't care about relationships. Everybody has several of those people in their life.
Understand that you are going to have to address several things navigating through the world as it pertains to men who have been conditioned to think that they are superior, which I don't believe, in the natural world, that is the case.
I remember Pavarotti telling me, 'Oh, Neil, after seventy, the voice is going to go.' But I've been lucky. You almost have to learn how to sing all over again. You use your diaphragm more. You have to choose the notes and pace yourself.
I'd feel more of the pressures of daily life, obsessed about finding a job or love. Maybe I've taken these things for granted. I go through a lot of other things in the music industry, but "daily life" is a whole different war to fight.
I give myself time with a guitar and PA to let my subconscious do its thing. This happens repeatedly over a period of time, and slowly, a set of songs emerge that make some sort of sense to me as a body of work that turns into an album.
I play David Hasselhoff's secretary and she gets around a bit - it's quite a role. I end up in bed with Adam Sandler, It's so surreal it's hysterical . . I'm so excited. This is the biggest thing I have ever done, there's no comparison.
The whole music industry has completely and totally changed from how it was. It's very, very different. When we started, there were loads of record company people throwing money at musicians, and that did give people a long term career.