Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I was still at school, I'd help Dad at the concrete yard he had prior to the garden centre. I was doing things there, like driving the tractors and forklifts, that most kids my age couldn't.
My access to music when I was growing up was through pirate radio, you know, transistor radio under the pillow, listening to one more and then 'just one more' until your favourite track comes on.
No, I was two years older than the other guys. I was a war baby. My family were a lot poorer than they were. I'd had to fight too hard for anything I had in my life and to smash things up for me.
Monterey, I remember, but I seem to remember the Fillmore West, that we played the week before Monterey. That was much more memorable for me. The first time in San Francisco. They were good gigs.
We tend to think of age only in time, but I don't think it has much to do with time at all; there's a whole load of other things. I've met 16-year-olds who are old and 90-year-olds who are young.
I work with men a lot, and there's a yin and a yang that goes on when you work one guy and one girl. And there's things that I bring that they don't bring and things they bring and I don't bring.
Boxing is a really difficult sport! So I don't want to tell you I wouldn't try it, but I guess everybody that does know about it, my friends, they tell me how difficult it is, and I'm like, 'Eh.'
To control and enslave the minds of men, all one must do is convince them that a secret exists, and that he is privy to information regarding that secret; hence the power of priests and psychics.
It's important for all people, and not just people in bands, to speak out on social justice issues. That means journalists or plumbers have just as much of a responsibility to do that as artists.
Success happened little by little for me. I tasted the flavor of fame in small doses: I started at 10 years old when I won a music contest; I was performing at birthday parties, company meetings.
I consider myself as a singer first, but something that really helped me come into my own is that there's not a separation between me singing and me playing the guitar. The two fed off the other.
I have yet to have a successful outcome of sitting in a room with someone and trying to write a song. The way that I generally co-write is that someone else writes the music or part of the music.
I don't love performing, because it's nerve-racking and it's time - consuming to rehearse a whole set - and my time can often be better served writing music and just making it and putting it out.
And if I'm honest about it, I was obsessed with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. This is like '92, right in the throes of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Nirvana. I think I probably wanted to be Kurt Cobain.
Maybe I'm not as big a star as Bruce Springsteen because I'm not as good. I don't know. It doesn't matter. I still have an audience of a certain size. I think it's one of the things I'm luckiest.
I am connected to the past in a way that keeps me going forward. Every leap forward that I make is by reaching back and firmly getting a footing in the past, and pushing forward as hard as I can.
Country music especially can get very formulaic - you know, you have to have your verses and a bridge and a chorus, and a lot of the songs are written as just plain and simple poetry on the road.
I'm so lucky that I get to write my own music and write my own stories, so every single time I look down in the audience and I see somebody singing the words back to me, it makes it all worth it.
I've never gotten thick skin. If you close yourself off and you get this protective armor, there is a price you pay with that - of not feeling. And feeling is important when you are a songwriter.
I don't talk about my personal life in great detail. I write about it in my songs, and I feel like you can share enough about your life in your music to let people know what you're going through.
I think who you are in school really sticks with you. I don't ever feel like the cool kid at the party, ever. It's like, 'Smile and be nice to everybody, because you were not invited to be here.'
If you record the sound of bacon in a frying pan and play it back, it sounds like the pops and cracks on an old 33 1/3 recording. Almost exactly like that. You could substitute it for that sound.
I learned a lot from that first record and I learned a lot from my experiences touring, but really the biggest education I got over the past two years was learning the importance of arrangements.
A lot of times people will think, ‘I’m strong, I’m in shape; why can’t I do this pose?’  But that’s not the point. There’s nothing to win in yoga. You just do what you can do, one day to the next.
I want to study marriage. I want to learn about it. I want to know it. I want to figure out whether or not I want to do it. I'm not just going to leap into it, because that's not good for anybody.
Americans are always mortified when I tell them this, but in England, it's a tradition to put your plaques and photographs and awards and gold records and stuff in your bathroom. I don't know why.
I'll bet every great thinker and leader we've got Could see all kinds of things other people could not! So then why get upset if somebody like me Tries to look at the world just a bit differently?
Why are you so petrified of silence, here can you handle this? Did you think about your bills, your ex, your deadlines or when you think you're gonna die? Or did you long for the next distraction.
I think Edward Sharpe's music is counter-cultural music in the strangest sense where you have a time now where love, optimism, hope and community are uncool and not part of the mainstream culture.
I think I prefer for the listener to decide for themselves what stuff means, because I always hate it when I think a song is about a horse, and then it turns out to be about a damn trip to France.
I write really slowly, and my lines are really, really terrible all the time. It takes so long for me to get them to be where I won't be embarrassed to sing them, and then feel like they're great.
I'm a nervous sharer. I'm nervous to share things in their unfinished state just because, I mean, it's kind of embarrassing. You know what it could be, but you can't explain what it's going to be.
You always have to take responsibility for the choices you made. Once you can come to that truth, it's a very satisfying and relieving feeling. You don't have to fight anymore, you just get to do.
You can't deny a band whose fans will literally do anything to see them win the awards. We're very appreciative to the fan base. That mutual feeling of appreciation is something that really helps.
If you have your own agenda and your own style and you don't easily conform to what the masses are doing, you're looked upon as being difficult. Whereas, I think of it as just being an individual.
I have lots of friends, but I'm probably a terrible friend to all of them, even my family. I wouldn't be surprised if I found myself with no friends later on in life. My friends become my enemies.
Everywhere I go, I see all kinds of people at my shows - conservatives, liberals, new-agers, teen-agers, old pensioners. And for those people to have something in common is real interesting to me.
I didn't really have a religious upbringing in my life, which was tough at times because I was searching for some kind of meaning, but it also gave me an avenue to find my own sense of connection.
I would go on the iTunes chart and see the hottest songs, then I'd cover them. People would go on YouTube and search for those songs. That's how I got my views. I'd post two or three songs a week.
Even if you're only wearing trainers and a vest, eyeliner will instantly transform you. People always look put-together when their make-up's on and their eyes are popping - just ask Amy Winehouse!
I have been 130 lbs. as well as 215 lbs. I have had blond, strawberry blond, green, pink and purple hair, and none of that has ever exempted me from having lewd comments flung at me in the street.
A weird thing about Gossip that I've always said: "If I weren't in this band, I would never listen to it." But I would go see it. It's a band you would go see that you don't necessarily listen to.
Throughout our career, people thought Bobby and I disliked each other. That's not true, but our relationship was very complicated. We were like brothers - and brothers don't always see eye to eye.
The art of the three-minute song is more like journalism than writing a big 400-page book. You want to be brief, you want to make sense right yen and there. And sometimes that takes a bit of work.
I've built a solid career there, but America's ten times the size. Now that we're onto the third record, I feel like the stars have aligned and American audiences are embracing my music even more.
I think it's part of being English, particularly if you are middle-class - you're always looking to be reminded that you are no good and you are always actually embarrassed about being successful.
India appeals to everybody. For me personally, I always felt like we would come here when we wanted to embrace all colours. I don't mean racially, but literally; just all the colours of the world.
I played a gig at the Montreax Jazz Festival once - and on a song called 'It's All Gone,' I had to do free-form slide solo. It's the best thing I've ever done - because I wasn't thinking about it.
There's a band called Pantera that I listen to, and then Metallica's 'And Justice for All.' If you listen to a little bit of that before you go on stage, you're pretty much set for the whole show.
For me, I have the highest amount of respect for DJs. There's a real skill set and ability to hold a crowd's attention for four to five hours, especially with an R&B/hip-hop and open-format music.