Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
See, I don't know nothing about singing. I never wanted to be a frontman. Frontmen had big egos and was always crazy and aggravating. I just never thought that was a good idea.
Breakups just hit you harder when you're younger. When I was a teenager, it felt like the most depressing thing in the world if a boy I was infatuated with didn't like me back!
I know that when I make a record like The Delivery Man as a contrast to even Il Sogno, this is going to reach a wider audience, because it communicates in that very direct way.
There are so many different people that I've emulated vocally. In the rock world - Sebastian Bach, Vince Neil, Freddie Mercury, Robert Plant. They all had amazing vocal talent.
I love that there's this tradition of being able to discuss the heaviest topics and the gnarliest stuff that goes down in people's lives in traditional Southern American music.
Africa doesn't look like it's changed that much to me since I first went in '94. There is still a major economic divide, but the rights of Africans have changed and progressed.
I tend to write a lot of love songs, but I always want there to be something real and authentic that people can connect to, and I want to not just do it in a stereotypical way.
Jesus built a ship to sing a song to, it sails the rivers and it sails the tide. Some of my friends don't know who they belong to, some can't get a single thing to work inside.
At the Muddy Waters thing, I played the first song by myself on an acoustic guitar. I thought that was great that y'all did that tribute to Muddy Waters. I had a real good time
But I can say that the business has changed drastically since I started at 8 years old. Everything from the way you tour to how you make a record and how you release the music.
I wake up in the morning and sometimes I just want to wear a T-shirt and blue jeans and now I have to force myself to do that, because I can't care what people think, you know?
My mom makes the best Cajun stuff. I'm a big gumbo guy. I've lost a lot of my Louisiana accent, so now when I say 'gumbo,' I feel like someone who's never said the word before.
I had been performing since I was 5, so it wasn't like I hadn't been on a stage before. I was always older than my age. That's my nature. I've always been a kind of mature kid.
If all you were left believing was what you were seeing, it'd be nothing but desperate. To have hope, you're going to have to imagine that there's something behind the curtain.
We've all had that experience where we hear a song that we've liked for many years, and we finally hear what the writer tells us what it's about, and you're often disappointed.
I've never been someone who's very prone to boredom. I don't know, boredom seems like something you should grow out of at about 15 or 16. There's so much that needs to be done.
When I have a breakthrough in music and I hear the melody in my hands: that's when I get compelled - something in my gut just has to rise up and sing and put something to that.
Nikki Giovanni! I got a book of hers from the library, and there was this woman who could paint me on paper with words - my whole little experience. I thought it was wonderful.
I've always found drugs and alcohol somewhat pedestrian. It's like, I don't need an external agent to open my mind. I'm here, conscious, alert, present. Why would I alter that?
The Earth is our mother just turning around, with her trees in the forest and roots underground. Our father above us whose sigh is the wind, paint us a rainbow without any end.
It's quite sad to see how many people I've known over that years that just die off, you know like wilted flowers. Well, there's something to be said for flowers in the dustbin.
Deep in the heart of the infinite darkness, a tiny blue marble is spinning through space. Born in the splendor of God's holy vision, and sliding away like a tear down his face.
I love football. My weekends are booked. Saturday college games and Sunday NFL and 'Monday Night Football.' Booked! Football is first, then basketball and then everything else.
We always get back to old soul singers like Nina Simone, and how her recordings sound. Also new music like Tobacco, or people that use a mixture of analog and electronic music.
My music is the chicken soup kind. I want people to get a good feeling in their soul from these songs. Roots rock, heartland rock... whatever you want to call it is OK with me.
People expect you to be this weird cartoon sometimes when you're a musician. I hate that. I hate standing out. I hate people looking at me. I just want to be part of the crowd.
I wish I had a better metabolism. But someone else probably wishes they could walk into a room and make friends with everyone like I can. You always want what someone else has.
Sometimes you're trapped in writing songs and you don't have enough distance from what you do anymore and you need the talent and the years of other people to come and jump in.
If I look at it, it's about being able to get lost in New York, to explore the city, to have more personal stories about New York, although some could also take place in Paris.
There was time in the first half of the '80s when what I was saying on the stage was controversial. A lot of things I was talking about - Nicaragua and American foreign policy.
I know there are certain gifts that each of us have. The gifts you don't have to worry about so much, because God gave them to us. It's the living, it's the life, it's the now.
When you go through life, when you go through different things, you take risks, you question yourself. I think everybody does, at some point in their life, question themselves.
I think that we have to be very careful and get back into the loop, get back to nature. Get back to God and not let the technology send us somewhere that we're going to regret.
I think if anyone looks at the history of So Solid, you'll see that we've never stuck to one sound. We've always created from other genres, from R&B, hip-hop, bashment, jungle.
I'm like a lion - I roar. If someone betrays me, I won't be a victim. I don't sulk, I get angry. I go immediately into retaliation. But it always comes from insecurity or pain.
I know when I'm onstage, I don't think about how it looks, I just concentrate on really feeling what I hear. But I totally know I look like Gollum when I perform, so it's cool.
My idea is not to be big. I just want to be really lean and shredded as I possibly can get - a lot of cardio, light weight, and a lot of my own weight to build up my endurance.
I was a total floral hippie as a child so when I finally could make my own choices, I've been living in different black suit jackets and been really drawn to masculine clothes.
I think most children who are adopted ultimately want to meet their biological parents and often do. I think that is an important journey for children who are adopted to go on.
I'm obsessed with clowns and what they represent and the idea that clowns are supposed to make you laugh, but inevitably they're hiding something. That's how I look at my life.
There's a universal inside of me. So if I tell my story, you're going to see parts of your story in it. I don't know which parts, but we all overlap. We're all very much alike.
At 18, I got a publishing deal, so I was like, 'I can do this for real and not go to college.' When I was a teenager, my parents dragged me to a lot of songwriting conventions.
You have always been deciding the truth of your life. It is how you decide to feel about it. There is no need to try to work out what something means. You decide what it means.
I'd say to myself: "This is my dream, this is my wish." Because a wish is more than a wish. It is a goal. It is something your conscious and subconscious can help make reality.
If - and it can be in a movie or in a department store - I hear someone arguing with their child, I break down and cry. Because it reflects how I was treated when I was little.
Whatever you see me do is spontaneous reactions on stage. It's nothing planned. It's nothing that I got in the room and tried to think of hard. It just happens through feeling.
If I really like the smell of something - a piece of tar or my goddaughter's plastic doll - I put a tiny piece in a bottle with a label. I keep them in a fridge in my bathroom.
It just seems like musicians want to sell a few records and put out a perfume line, and I think it's so sad that there are so many musicians who don't want to change the world.
I think we need to be sexy and kind of mysterious and still pretty and beautiful. I like to hear that when a man sings. I don't really want to hear about taking my clothes off.
It's much easier to write when you're sad. But you can end up isolated and depressed because you almost need to put yourself in that situation to have that angst to write from.