Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've made music for grownups most of my life as a singer/songwriter - often with my band, Nine Stories - recorded many albums, and 10 years ago I started recording kid's music, too.
I like Jailhouse Rock and Love Me Tender. The black-and-white films. With music, I tend more toward the '70s stuff because I was at the shows for those, so they bring back memories.
Black people lived right by the railroad tracks and the train would shake their houses at night. I would hear it as a boy and I thought: I'm gonna make a song that sounds like that.
I think they saw me as something like a deliverer, a way out. My means of expression, my music, was a way in which a lot of people wished they could express themselves and couldn't.
The other day I was reading a blog and I linked over to Streisand's Web site, and it was amazing politically. She's so insightful and incisive. And she also says whatever she wants.
Sometimes they work, and sometimes they just won't. Sometimes you get hung up on them. When that happens, you just throw it back, and maybe come back to it two or three weeks later.
I can cry myself to sleep because I'm not as great as Leonard Cohen, but who cares? Maybe you can't be as great as some people, but it's a tragedy when you don't follow your dreams.
I do watch 'American Idol' sometimes. It's not really that pleasurable... I take that back. It is the epitome of a guilty pleasure. Sometimes there's some good singers on that show.
People who listen to them properly don't underestimate them. Unfortunately, there's so much about my career and me that distracts people from the actual content of most of my songs.
I could have easily doubled my profit and made two records out of 'Among the Leaves', but the songs represented a certain period, and it made sense to get it out there as one piece.
It's better to embrace your roots than it is to fight it, because then you're just fighting something that you're not going to win. We're like a band of gypsies, and it makes sense.
It's the hillbilly rock, beat it with a drum. Playin' them guitars like shootin from a gun. Keepin' up the rhythm, steady as a clock. Doin' a little thing called the hillbilly rock.
I don't know what kind of God the rest of y'all are serving, but the God I serve says, 'Mary, you need to be the hottest thing this year, and I'm gonna make sure you're doing that.'
I am here no longer just a vision birthed into this body I accept my praise, my blame, my joy, my sorrow I realize we are, in truth, the truth we seek God, perfect this very moment.
Changing the big picture takes time.. and the best things to do is focus on the things that we can make in our lives if we're doing all that. That becomes the collage of real change
I was brought up in many different cultures, moving around all the time, and I find my identity in my songs. I project the identity I want to have throughout the songs that I write.
I'm always calling my doctor because I'm constantly injuring myself while on the road, like tearing a ligament, blasting my ears or losing my voice. Plus, I'm a total hypochondriac.
Many of my friends back in New York and elsewhere have a glib or dismissive attitude toward Los Angeles. It's a place of strip malls and traffic and not much else, in their opinion.
You want to sing this song. And so it goes on until eventually, after - well, however long it can take - sometimes a few days, sometimes months - you piece the whole thing together.
When I started with the Velvets, I wanted to sing Lou's song 'I'm Waiting for the Man,' but he wouldn't let me. I guess he thought I didn't understand its meaning, and he was right.
But then as I got older, I got to know all these amazing artists like Alanis Morissette, Stevie Nicks, Debbie Harry, all these women who are really the creators behind who they are.
I am 100% there when I'm doing what I'm doing when I'm onstage and recording. I don't ever want to look back at any moment and say to myself that I felt uncomfortable with who I am.
It was very difficult when I was trying to figure out how to have a marriage and babies and do this at the same time. There was no handbook. You were making it up as you went along.
The smile on your face lets me know that you need me, there's a truth in your heart that says you'll never leave me, and the touch of your hand says you'll catch me whenever I fall.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
Big productions, to me, are great - like, I love going to Vegas and seeing shows - but I think that sometimes it's distracting, especially when you are there to listen to the music.
'When Doves Cry' came out - it sounded like nothing that was on the radio. 'Let's Go Crazy' was number one on R&B stations, and there's nothing that's been like that on radio since.
Award shows, like the Grammys, were tough on us early in hip-hop, not even televising our categories or splitting them up on best male or female or any of that. We had to earn them.
There's something about [pain] that excites me. If I'm feeling really awful about something, it's because I haven't experienced it before. There's something I need to learn from it.
I like the idea of taking a true classic written by a true genius and destroying it essentially! I like the idea of bringing it down to earth a bit - and even a bit lower than that.
Love is where it's at. I'm not speaking of sexual love. I'm talking about where you love each other, want to do the best for each other and just just are happy you found each other.
I think songwriters are more related to fiction writers. The Odyssey was a story in song. To me, that's so beautiful, all those painted characters, all those travels and adventures.
I hate picking favourite books. I usually tend to stay away from all the 'top record' and 'favourite song' and 'favourite book', and I just think it doesn't do any good for anybody.
My mother's family came from the British West Indies. And my father's family came from, well, my father's father came from the Montana/South Dakota area. They were Blackfoot Indian.
For years after 'The Last Waltz,' I got all kinds of silly movie offers - or, maybe, not silly, but parts that are not my calling... lots of offers to play some wonderful boyfriend.
For me, the best thing you can do as a man in loving someone is to do your best, go on that walk, and at the end of that walk be as much of a gentleman as you were in the beginning.
All the things that most people hate about traveling -- the recycled air, the artificial lighting, the digital juice dispensers, the cheap sushi -- are warm reminders that I'm home.
I actually have OCD really bad, and it's getting a bit worse at the moment. I have to check taps... before I leave the house, to make sure I've checked everything in case it floods.
The music industry is really funny, when you have a hit record, everyone knows who are you, everyone wants to do duets with you, then if you have a miss, people suffer from amnesia.
The Summit of the Americas is an excellent platform to raise awareness and secure commitments from heads of state and different sector leaders regarding Early Childhood Development.
Protest is patriotic. Since the beginning of musical time, American singers and songwriters have used their talent and bully pulpits to show us America's strengths and shortcomings.
The world has changed a lot since I started making records.I used to go into a studio and there were songs there, chosen for me to see if I liked them. I wasn't encouraged to write.
I think in the first place hearing the music inside of you is very soothing, very comforting. For me there always been, if you like, a spiritual connection between myself and music.
I wasn't raised to not write about issues, and I'm just living in really politically charged times. You know, I'd rather write songs about girls, but it's just hard to do right now.
Mother my friends are no longer my friends And the games we once played have no meaning I've gone serious and shy and they can't figure why So they've left me to my own daydreaming.
I get really restless when I haven't worked for a day and a half. I have a recurring dream that people are lined up next to my bed, waiting for autographs and taking pictures of me!
If people ask me about it, I think it would be great for me to be like, 'Look, [Kanye West] called me and told me the line before it came out. Like, joke's on you guys, we're fine'.
With sincere modesty, if there is such a thing, I have never thought of legacy at all. I am always grateful if people like what I have done. A legacy is something no one can forsee.
I thought about majoring in Math, Chemistry and English, but Math had the fewest requirements, so I went with it. I knew I wanted to teach, and Math was my field, so I studied Math.
Most of us have the residue of thousands of songs in our ears, that if you end up songwriting, I think you're mostly smoking the residue of all that material you absorbed over time.