Sinclair Lewis was asked one time to give a talk to class of students about writing. When he got there he asked the class, Do you people want to be writers?and they all said yes. Then Lewis said, Why the hell aren't you at home writing?

You watch the country-music awards that they show on the television, and you see country music has reached about 1985. It's all huge processed drum sounds and chiming chorus guitars and programmed synths bobbling along in the background.

I have a lot of friends who are in mixed race relationships who are gay. But I think that the reason it bothers people is because there is not enough representation, even in the straight world, of people loving people who look like them.

I hadn't even dreamed of getting another Academy Award, and there I was unhappy in my private life and miserable, I remember Odets drove me three times around the Biltmore, where the Oscars were given out, because I was so full of tears.

My frustration has always been that I'm a Christian, but I don't buy into, never have bought into, the belief that Jesus and God are these men who just dictate that this is how you have to live your life or you are going to burn in hell.

In my vocal, I think you can hear something of my earlier times when I'd sing in subway halls for the echo and perform doo-wop on street corners. But I had a lot of influences, too - singers like Sam Cooke, Brook Benton and Roy Hamilton.

I think having a coach or an editor or whatever the novelist's producer is could help. If you finish a chapter and you turn it in to him, and he or she said, "That was pretty good, it might go better." Maybe that's what I'll try to find.

My wife was an amazing, amazing person. Sophia's Heart is an organization that I founded in honor of my wife when she passed away. When she passed away it was a complete shock, and it was disappointment, anger. I felt all those emotions.

Which I would've done 'cause I volunteered for the draft which meant that I only had to do two years. But when the Cubans had missiles in the Canal and Kennedy made the extension, I was one of the ones who had enough time to be extended.

I did miss the music a bit - but only in the wings, when I was waiting to go on. It seemed dreadfully quiet, rather unnerving. But the wonderful thing was that one didn't have to be quite so obsessive about one's health, and one's voice.

You gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time.

TALLAHASSEE LASSIE was a record I wrote with my mom. A number of other famous groups have also recorded it such as Led Zeppelin (I understand they are currently touring) and several other English bands and also some various "Punk Bands".

My goal is really to continue to make music. I really don't make music to have platinum records and all that kind of stuff. I've been there. I do it because I love music, and I love uplifting people through my music. That's my real goal.

It seems to me like Mother Nature's mercy and forgiveness have run dry, as we ceaselessly abuse her and take her for granted in order for us to continue our addiction to using fossil fuels. I've gotta say, I don't blame her. Not one bit.

You're always going to write and draw inspiration from things that you're feeling, things that you've felt. It's kind of impossible not to unless you're writing a song and there's an exact scenario that you're trying to write a song for.

'Maze Runner' is about a group of teens that live inside this giant maze. And outside the maze are these creatures that come out at night. The centerpiece of the maze where we stay is called the Glades, and we call ourselves the Gladers.

I started out to be a person on the street, just like everybody else. I didn't start out to be a singer. But I got sort of swept up in this singing thing, and after I got involved in it it got really important to me if I was good or not.

The underground scene is still a cool way to meet a lot of cool people, see a lot of interesting bands and get a lot of food for thought, but people have to remain curious and get their brain activity food from other places besides punk.

I love the tour bunks. I can sleep like a baby in those bunks. It really doesn't bother me at all. A lot of people have a difficult time - they're like, 'It's like a coffin.' I get in there and I just pass out. You can't even wake me up.

I don't hear anyone out there that sounds like us. They can try but it's in the sonics, the whole carcass of the song. The way it attacks you is so well engineered. No one else can do that. They don't have the ability to make that noise.

I meal prep when I'm traveling and make sure to have three solid, high-protein and low-carb meals a day with a few snacks in between. But I try not to be too hard on myself. At the end of the day, it's all about having a healthy balance.

I am constantly working out-circuit training, jumping rope, and stair-stepping, and sticking to 1200 calories a day. It can't be something that you're doing to lose weight, and then once you do, you're done. I do it every day of my life.

I don't have to come back, because I am still here! And I'm not an '80s thing. I already worked with my first band back in East Germany and that was soooo '70s, young man. I'm a '70s thing. If I'm a thing at all... and an exciting thing.

The American record company Geffen got so fed up with me that they said they weren't going to release my fourth record unless I gave it some title. So it was called 'Security' in America, and it had no title everywhere else in the world.

Being in the public eye, I struggle to create and maintain romantic relationships. I am constantly faced with assumptions about who my significant other is, and it seems that there is always some speculation about my relationship status.

When I'm with my wife, I know she's a beautiful woman. I know that, and more than that, it's what she is inside. She's beautiful inside; she loves music like I do. That's the thing that brought us together and probably keeps us together.

I strive for what you do find in Shakespeare's work - that there is a definite humanity and a definite character behind the writing in the sonnets, and it's very real because it's so deeply personal. I try to aspire to that in what I do.

That's just a symbol of how you should deal with a breakup. You can cry for a little bit, eat some ice cream, but I think, after that, it's like, get up, listen to some powerful music and do something that makes you happy, be productive.

I'm sure those rumors are spread, but it's just ah - we're really good friend. We've been since day one in Hollywood. In class, we've been together in school. We've gotten really close, but I don't know about the more than friends stuff.

When you're rich and famous you are the dominant force in a relationship, even if you try hard not to be. I've talked of sacrificing everything for Fleetwood Mac, but I realize now that it is simply the only thing I've ever wanted to do.

I think you have to be a little bit strict. You can't be friend and their parent in a lot of situations, especially in this day and age where it's so dangerous for kids. So there's a bit of sternness, I guess, in the way I raise my kids.

I grew up in Louisiana, and I grew up with a dysfunctional family with some very serious abuse from my stepfather, who could be a very beautiful person on one hand and be terrible on the other, so it leaves your soul troubled as a child.

I'm actually not an exhibitionist at all. When you get onstage and you get under the lights playing music, I feel more hidden and more alone than anywhere else. You hide behind your music and let your emotions come out through the music.

Frank Sinatra discovered me at a nightclub called P.J.'s in Hollywood. It was 1962. He used to come in there a lot with all his big star friends. I was so nervous to see him. I've only had one idol in my life, and that was Frank Sinatra.

You wondered how you'd make it through. I wondered what was wrong with you. Because how could you give your love to someone else, yet share your dreams with me? Sometimes the only thing you're looking for, is the one thing you can't see.

I have lots of favorite shows, but not reality! I don't like reality TV so much. I'm saddened by people who don't show respect to each other and to themselves. It's horrible. Unfortunately, that's demonstrated a lot on reality television.

Bud Johnson, God rest his soul of fame, a tenor saxophonist. Bud was always a big, big, big booster of mine and he always when I first met Bud in Pittsburgh when he came through there, he heard me sing and he wanted me to come to Chicago.

All I needed to do was sing with conviction, speaking my truth from the heart, honestly and straightforwardly, and to offer my words, ideas and music to the audience as if it were one collective friend that I'd known for a very long time.

I just think Josephine Baker life story needs to be done. I think she was an extraordinary woman. To see someone who was basically a showgirl have the kind of lifestyle she had was extraordinary. I really think she made her own lifestyle.

My first tour, for six weeks straight, was with Bobby Darin, in 1958. It was just fun hanging out with him. He was older than I was; he was a college guy. It was kind of a mutual-admiration society, I guess. He taught me how to pay taxes.

When you record an album and it goes platinum... yeah, you're in the studio and you work hard for months, but it's not like your whole body hurts. Maybe you get a little hoarse and tired. But on 'Dancing With the Stars,' everything hurts.

I find myself getting so upset because I was never able to be a good mother for my daughter or a good grandmother for my granddaughter because I was always so sick. I only hope that I can live long enough to see my granddaughter graduate.

You had to wear a hat to go to church. We weren't allowed to straighten our hair. We couldn't wear jewellery, nail polish, open backed shoes, skirts above the knee... trousers were forbidden because male apparel on a female was not godly.

I actually only went to high school for six weeks. I lost sleep deciding on what I would wear the next day or who I had to impress. I was just a much more down-to-earth, relaxed person once I decided not to care what people thought of me.

I'd have a few on and off, but the commitment was always more on the girls' part than on mine, to be perfectly honest. So, I met a girl in Tokyo, on my Japanese tour, with whom I've been living ever since, very happily. Her name is Suchi.

I feel like artists and their lyrics are something that people can relate to when it comes to love and break-ups. I really want people to know how I felt when I went through a break up, when I really felt alive, and everything in between.

I love our country so much. And we should all love and respect each other because this is the greatest country in the world. I see the love. I see the unity in all walks of life on a daily basis and It makes me so proud to be an American.

I would say that I'm a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you...because no one has the right to take the life of another human being.

I wish it was clear for me how it happened [stop writing songs], then maybe I could start writing again. But it's kind of an "it." It just submerged itself. Because the way I had always written was just that it came out. It just happened.

When I was 13, I used to go to a jazz club. The owner of the club became my first business manager. She was very gutsy and had a lot of friends, one of whom happened to be the head of jazz at Columbia at the time. That's how it all began.

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