Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Like most kids, I grew up singing 'This Land Is Your Land' in grammar school, but with the most radical verses neatly removed. This was before I knew it was a Woody Guthrie song.
But I'm able to just keep going, and that's the challenge. It's the next song. And then just enjoying the shows and people who come out to the shows. It's pretty organic, really.
Who do you want to be: the radical man who can make a choice in one second, or the man who never takes decisions? That's the question: who's the best? Actually, there is no best.
The best fiction is geared towards conflict. We learn most about our characters through tension, when they are put up against insurmountable obstacles. This is true in real life.
I learned everything the hard way - like, literally, everything. I know that God does that to people that he has lessons for. I just wish that I had learned less extreme lessons.
When I get to tell a story through music videos or TV, it's all about finding the story that I want to tell, so I'm definitely open to acting roles, it just depends on the story.
I didn't feel the need for anonymous affection, for people in the dark applauding. To me, it would be like writing a novel and then getting up every night and reading your novel.
As a school boy I played with a plastic grenade, it was grey and with caps, it was loaded. In the dirt we would cry and dramatically die, as it flew through the air and exploded.
My non-career. My excuse for a career? Honestly, I never think about the word 'career.' I've had managers, the minute they say it to me, they look at me and just roll their eyes.
I create from a place of passion. It's like a pregnancy, where you create from a place of passion, and then it grows, and then before you know it, you want to push that baby out.
For the version of this CD released in Japan, a translation of the English lyrics is included, but there are lots of places where meanings are lost in the process of translation.
I paid my dues. I have crawled to gigs. I have served people coffee. I worked hard selling all these records out the back of my car. Girl, I'm ready to sell one the real way now.
If the spirit comes through in a Madame George type of song, that's what the spirit says. You have very little to do with it. You're like an instrument for what's coming through.
What excited me when I first came into it was the performing aspect and doing blues-oriented material, rock/blues oriented stuff, basic stuff, basic what they call rock 'n' roll.
Was a great high wall there that tried to stop me. Was a great big sign there said private Property but on the back side it didn't say nothing. That side was made for you and me.
A lot of my emotional issues come from dealing with the opposite sex. I've come to terms with the fact that I'll be retired before I can finally enter into a healthy relationship.
What I discovered in Berlin was this immense freedom because it felt like you could start any kind of project and nobody would care... and that's what I sort of adopted to my own.
My process for the parodies is that I get an idea for a song and then get approval from the artist and then go in and record it and probably try to get it out as soon as possible.
I think the Bible is hugely patriarchal. There are so many sexist comments and homophobic comments and comments that are not in keeping with nurturing and loving the human spirit.
When I'm on stage, my interaction with the audience is something that really makes me come alive. It's a feeling like no other. The energy of the crowd fuels something new inside.
The desire to play has always been in me. I remember my first experience at about four or five of really dying to sing and dying to play that came from no one telling me to do so.
One of the things that always disappointed me as a kid, growing up, was when you could tell the singer had a fancy for something different and turned the band into something else.
I grew up in L.A. I actually grew up in the Valley, which was a pretty amazing place to grow up because everybody has nice, big backyards, and I was kind of a little nature being.
On Christmas Eve, it's my wife and my son and my daughter and I. We're home, and we open our presents together on Christmas Day, and then after we go visit the rest of the family.
Everybody has a language or code that they use with their wife or their girlfriend or boyfriend or what have you. It's a language aside from the language they have with strangers.
We all pine for a time in life when things were simpler. Even when they weren't necessarily simpler, hindsight makes them look a lot simpler. The reality of it was that it wasn't.
I live inside my own brain, most of the time. So where I am physically doesn't really bother me - if the physical place sparks something in my imagination, then it's a good place.
I tried to charm the pants off Bob Dylan, but everyone will be disappointed to learn that I was unsuccessful. I got close - a couple of fast feels in the front seat of a Cadillac.
It's the Point of Your View that Decides What You See - / One Man's Flop Is Another Man's Hit. / From Manners to Movies, the Picture Keeps Changing / Depending Upon Where You Sit.
I'm very much half-American - my mom is American. I grew up in Australia until I was 16, then I finished high school over here because I got into this performing arts high school.
Everybody thinks I'm at death's door, but I'm not. There's nothing seriously wrong with me, and my heart is in 100 percent working order. Anything else you may hear is a damn lie!
I think people like it when I tell them, 'I'm lucky to be here, because they are, too. Ain't nothing to do with age. There ain't nothing promised to you. Everybody's going to die.
I started going to Madame Louise's, the lesbian club where all the punk bands used to go - the Sex Pistols, the Clash. I remember seeing Billy Idol walk in there; he was gorgeous.
I'm much more careful now about who I let into my life, but I don't think you could ever change what you're attracted to. You can make choices if you want to be with those people.
You want to know my real pleasure? Food. I love chocolate. I can't get enough chocolate. I can't help it. But my biggest pleasure of all is exercise. I really get off on exercise.
I really do love bluesy-jazzy music, so I love Etta James, B.B. King and Billie Holiday. I love that they have soul in their voices - I think that's something important is having.
My father moved to Hawaii from Brooklyn and my mother came there as a child from the Philippines. They met at a show where my dad was playing percussion. My mom was a hula dancer.
When somebody says, 'Oh, Buffy, you're such a warrior for peace', I stop them and say, 'No, I'm not really a warrior for peace. What I promote is alternative conflict resolution'.
I didn't get into the music business because somebody made me take piano lessons, you know. I got into music because I was a natural writer and had a lot of curiosity about sound.
In those days a concert was a personal experience. I wanted to be as close as possible to the audience and of course big stadiums didn't enable you to do that. It wasn't my style.
So, once I get writing I really try and put five to eight hours a day in my room with a guitar to really try and come up with stuff that feels interesting enough to me to keep it.
Well, Winnepeg has everything to do with my music in the sense it was where I was born and raised, cultured and all that sort of thing. A lot of my experiences come from Winnepeg.
I sometimes think I might be autistic because I like to know - I need to know - my beginnings and my ends. I don't have to be in control of it, but I need to know what's going on.
Well, fortunately we found out that the runner-up our particular year was going to get a record contract also. So it was kind of a - it was bitter sweet but it was an opportunity.
It's dangerous to buy into praise and criticism for what you do when you're trying to present your music to people. I don't ignore it completely, but I don't dwell on it too much.
I've realised that as long as the youth has the ability to use social media, and their voice is there, people can actually cut through the nonsense and see what's really going on.
I always sang. I wanted to be in a band with my sister, and I was, at 11. At 12, I started writing seriously, and that was my pacifier all through high school - that and painting.
I'm not really sure that I have the same definition of things as other people. Like, when people talk about being "engaged" with the audience, I'm not exactly sure what they mean.
I like putting common expressions next to uncommon expressions. I'm sure in Poetry 101 there is a name for it, but it seems like you usually go one way or the other in rock music.
I'm glad some people have that faith. I don't have that faith. If there is a God, a caring God, then we have to figure he's done an extraordinary job of making a very cruel world.