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A proactive person needs no pressure to perform and an ineffective person offloads his pressure onto others to deform the positive work culture of the system. So practically, a progressive organization knows that no pressure environment plays a pivotal role to increase the productivity or proficiency of its workforce.
People abroad always tend to take what the best of what we have and come back through the back door always, say, and hit us with it. And then we wake up one day and say, I think I've heard that. Yeah, it was done by whoever, you know. So, ah, that's been one of our weaknesses we don't tend to hold on as they do there.
It's not fair that our name can be used in any newspaper, any article connected with anything, and we can't really fight about it. It's like any newspaper that might take a picture of you, bad or good, and sometimes they're awful pictures, and they can use them without your approval and you can't do anything about it.
I make Eric pick up from this little local place in Nashville that has really good honey whole wheat bread. It's near where he works out in the morning, so I make him pick up a loaf, and the kids eat it, too. I'll just keep passing out toast all morning. The kids just walk around with crumbs everywhere; we don't care.
Oh, stuff the critics. I don't care. Too many people are snooty about classical. Look, I wasn't brought up in a home where we listened to classical music. It was a singing teacher that thought it would be best for my voice. Then I moved into crossover. And if that makes the music accessible to more people, then great.
The nice thing about doing a pop opera - in the way that doing, say, 'Miss Saigon' or 'Les Miz' would be - is that, because the convention is set from the beginning that this is an opera and everything is sung, there is never that feeling of 'Why is this person bursting out into song?' because the whole thing is sung.
I really look up to Louis C.K. I think he's great. And obviously he's very popular, more popular than me. Years ago, I was thinking, naively, it would be great to be that popular. And then I thought about it and then I realized that, with his money and his level of notoriety, he has all of the same emotions that I do.
I think there are three kinds of songs; it's only my theory: psychological, emotional, and spiritual. When you write psychologically or intellectually, you have a tune in your mind, and you re-write it. It's an intellectual approach. The emotional is my favorite because it comes from my kishkas; it comes from my soul.
Bollywood has got this rare quality where it dances, but it still has a depth of a sad song at the same time. It's really strange. They kind of manage to do two things at once. We do a ballad, or a dance song, and it's very difficult. They kind of mix those two things together. It's pretty impressive, beautiful music.
This time, we're living in such a crazy moment in history. People still write and talk about Watergate, which was such a huge, looming backdrop when I was coming of age and when I was a kid growing up. I think we're living in one of those times right now where, in 20 years, people will be writing and talking about it.
Today we take it for granted that the Bible is in our language. We forget that the Bible used to not be available to the common man. It's no wonder that TIME magazine recorded the number one event of the last 1,000 years was the Gutenberg printing of the Bible which made this book available in mass form to all people.
I blame it [never taking a break] on my mother. She was a born entertainer. Leave the songwriting, the singing and all that behind, and I still would have found some way to be an entertainer. I would have never been an actress, though, because I realized early in my life, in like sixth grade, I was a terrible actress.
I live myself with my cat Pebbles. She isn't enjoying the attention as much as me - she ran off up the stairs as soon as the film crew for the show came into the house. She didn't come down for hours. But I have the support of all my brothers and sisters and my neighbours and friends - everyone thinks it's just great.
You're speaking coldly towards me but why is it that my heart isn't getting cold at all? Is it because your heart is saying something else? Is it because there's something else you're hoping that I'll hear? So tell me the real reason. Why are you doing this? I'll become your strength. I have the confidence to do that.
I don't think I'm turning back the clock by doing these old tunes. I love rock and roll and popular music. It's just that the spirits of the singers whose songs I do are living within me. That's why the songs come out in the voices of the original singers. I'm not doing imitations. That's the way they sound inside me.
With the way music is going right now, it's difficult for an r&b singer to make real music. If it's not with a trap beat and you're not mumbling, no disrespect to all of the great artists out there doing what they're doing, I'm not hating, I'm just saying it's difficult for r&b singers right now to make quality music.
My direction has never really changed, because I don't think that you can really work gimmicks in gospel music. With gospel music, there is this central theme that always comes around about the love of God, the love of Jesus and the power that you have through Jesus Christ. You don't need a gimmick when you have that.
You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what's happening in Africa, and if we're honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.
Children used to get bullied at school. Now they go home and that's where the problem starts - because they sit on their phones all night, thinking about who's 'liked' a photo of them, who hates them, who loves them. They don't know what's real and what's not, editing their lives constantly to fit other people's views.
I think it's important to cultivate as many people as you can to see which ones you jive with. And it makes you happy. If one dies, you have another one. So living is a process that you have to do by yourself, and if you can learn a few little goodies along the way that might make it easier for you, so much the better.
People ask if I would do the TT myself - the actual romance of doing it is in me but the chances are zero. I can't belittle the talent and the bravery and the endurance that goes into a race like this. The competitors are some of the bravest men on the planet and it is one of the biggest challenges a racer can take on.
My parents are actually very famous singers in Bulgaria. My dad was in a rock band, and my mom was in a pop group. They met, fell in love, and actually formed a group together to escape the country because it was Communist, and they couldn't leave. They didn't know any English but eventually found their way to America.
I've never been to anywhere in Africa except Egypt. We've never performed there, so I would definitely like to make that trip, probably to South Africa. I'd also like to score a movie from top to bottom. I've had songs in a bunch of films but never done an entire movie. I'd like to do that and have it to be a hit, too!
Even though we can't be holding hands right now, even though we can't be looking each other in the eyes right now, I can feel it in my heart. The thing that I can do is that I can pray. Just because I said I am not there with you doesn't mean that I can't be there with you. No matter when it is, we are always together.
The song is about knowing the end result of every situation you're in, and being able to play it out in your mind and see it before it happens. It's about addiction, really, about knowing how it's all going to end up. In that sense, you're watching a movie of yourself all the time - and then you want out of that movie.
There are many singers who have got an exceptional talent, but spend their lives singing in local trains or hotels. Does the country even know who they are? Music in India is restricted only to Bollywood. Whoever manages to make a mark there is remembered. The ones who fail to reach and make it big there are forgotten.
I think the thing you're seeing now with the music industry is that the people who have tight-knit communities are now able to really hold each other up because of the internet tools. And the really top-down pyramid scheme of major labels and typical superstars isn't sustainable anymore because the system has collapsed.
God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.
I don't care what anyone says. You have to wake up and say to yourself, 'I accept that I have diabetes, and I'm not going to let it run my entire life.' It's a fine line, a Catch-22, a balancing act. I work to enjoy my life like a regular human being and at the same time keep my blood sugar levels as decent as possible.
One day, I was just fingering around on the keys of a Fender Rhodes piano, and I came up with this little riff, and all of a sudden, it morphed into a song. It had never been touched by a guitar, which was very weird for us. 'Under the Ground' is the first song I have ever written that had nothing to do with the guitar.
I cherish the memory of being a friend of Frank Sinatra on a friendship level to the point where we really hung out. We worked in Vegas, wed talk on the phone, and if I wasnt doing anything, Id fly out, and I spent time in Palm Springs at his house - on a level the way friends would be, not with a whole crowd of people.
I put my name on that Occupy Musicians list because someone wrote to me and said, "Would you do this?" I said, "Yeah sure, I support this." What artist wouldn't support that? What's the big deal? But then people wrote to me, "Wow! You're on that list!" And I'm like, "Who isn't on that list?" That would be more shocking.
Let's say for instance people say, "He's a really totalitarian, strict guy, he's hard to work with or whatever." I don't think it's true, but people's perception of me leads that direction, like I'm a fundamentalist person. I end up having to spend extra time saying, "I'm not a fundamentalist." I have other stuff to do.
Children used to get bullied at school. Now they go home, and that's where the problem starts - because they sit on their phones all night, thinking about who's 'liked' a photo of them, who hates them, who loves them. They don't know what's real and what's not, editing their lives constantly to fit other people's views.
In other words, it is what I do in the world that matters. When I traveled for three months in the Mideast, the places I wanted to go back to were Turkey and the Gaza Strip. It has to do with what Gandhi said: he found God in the eyes of the poor. Those are the places which were so moving that they were just unbearable.
I was going to make movies. I was the one in the family who was always rolling the video camera, making movies of my brothers around town, and then screening them for my parents. I still would love to make movies someday... that's something that really means a lot to me, and I know I'll have the chance to do it one day.
When I'm offstage, I never feel famous. I will never let anybody call a restaurant and say, "We're with Kenny Chesney. Can you get us in?" That's so pretentious. I'm pretty simple except for the fact that I have a really great boat and a little bit of money. When I'm offstage I don't feel like the person everybody sees.
Record companies don't think creatively about what something could possibly be because they are not filled with creative people. Nobody's looking at the future of music because they're concentrating so hard on what they can get from it right this second. It's really hard to see an artist; it's a lot easier to see money.
I write for myself; I'm trying to keep myself interested in the music. But at the same time, I want to make the songs relatable in a way; I want to keep melodies pretty simple and the lyrics open-ended so that people could maybe relate them to their own life in different ways. Something for everybody to have a piece of.
I think that you are what you speak a lot of times, and there's power in the tongue. I feel sorry for the people who always have something negative to say. If something happens bad in my day, I don't tweet about it - I pray about it, or talk to my husband about it or my mother about it, and get it off of me and move on.
With Othello, Shakespeare posed this problem of a black man in a white society in the role that he's playing. And Shakespeare gave Othello such dignity - he came not from - as he said - not from hate but from honor, from a sense of his own human dignity. And to me, to my mind, there could be no greater character played.
The industry has changed in that it is far more disposable than it used to be. When Boyzone came out, we were given a shot and the patience to record our singles and albums. Nowadays, the thought is if it is not working, then the artist will be dropped. The record companies will bail on the artists, and I find that sad.
I feel like my unwillingness to look for healthy options now is the reason why I have put my weight back on. … Everybody knows how to diet, everybody has had their shares of ups and downs of yo-yo diets, but the hardest thing is to learn really how to make this a lifestyle that you can sustain for the rest of your life.
I chose not to put a wig on. The reason why I chose to come out with the cancer thing is because there's somebody out there who can see that all sickness isn't unto death. That it's something you can't change at that point in time, so you just got to go with it. Don't be ashamed. Don't be ashamed of looking at yourself.
Before every show, I would call my mother and say, 'Mummy, I don't know how I will sing today.' But that would change as soon as I went on stage and would merge with my music. She is my best ally, and I don't want to lose her. Nobody other than her would be concerned if I had eaten or had oiled my hair. She is my queen.
You don't have to be the sexiest girl or the most talented person to have the X factor. X factor is something you are born with that is your own. And the moment that you realize how to tap into that quality that you have within, and how to bring that individuality out of yourself, that is when you discover the X factor.
We were fortunate at that time we were working with Virgin, and with Flood, probably more well-known as Brian Eno's engineer now and U2's producer, etc. Even though we weren't working in a strictly popular music area, which was great, we were lucky enough to work with people who were on the cusp of those sort of things.
I don't think that the universal themes of love, compassion, and forgiveness (are present). (You're) searching constantly for the next step, the next level and consciousness in your spirituality, who you are as a human being and what you contribute to society or what God means to you is always a course everyone goes on.
I want a guy who's going to be accepting of - one, my big 'ol, loud Mexican family - and also my career, because it's a lot. I don't want someone who's like... 'Oh, you don't have time for me'. Like, I want somebody who's sure of himself and gonna be like, 'Okay, you go do your thing, and when you come back, we're good.'
In the past, I think I was scared of showing myself. I thought people disliked me because I received so much hate when I was young. But as I grew older, I realized that there were people who disliked me and people who liked me. So I learned that there was no need for me to be so conscious of what others thought about me.