I think that when Riccardo Tisci wanted to bring more attention to the lack of African American presence on the runway, he also wanted to bring attention to the lack of a sensibility of African and Asian art.

The group-effort sound in recording of Sea Lion is like, you really hear all the people in the room and hear them interlocking. Theres a real freight-train energy of all these people at the same time playing.

The electro scene is all over the clubs now: groups like Duck Sauce, Empire of the Sun, even MGMT. But I get inspiration from everywhere. I'll go to the gym and put on old albums - Guns N' Roses or old Jay-Z.

Half of my life I’ve had people staring at me because they think I’m funny-looking and ugly. The other half 
of my life I’ve had people staring at me because they think I’m fascinating. Everything neutralises

It ain't what you're driving or the clothes that you wear, material possessions won't matter up there. And someday in heaven, when the angels all sing, well these rags that I'm wearin' will be fit for a king.

The punk rockers said, 'Learn three chords and form a band.' And we thought, 'Why learn any chords?' We wanted to make music like Ford made cars on the industrial belt. Industrial music for industrial people.

I think the Democratic Party has picked a lot of the wrong candidates, the kind that Middle America, or people who are more down the middle and more rational, can't side with. I think that's been the problem.

Chris is the engineer down at the studio where we do these things. And he's just such an integral part and he has such a marvelous ear. Also it turns out, we didn't know, but he's a pretty good fiddle player.

Guys are really easy to get along with. It's a lot better than being on the bus with eight girls. But the worst part is being the only girl, because there's some days where you just wanna watch a chick flick.

There's a song called 'All We'd Ever Need,' which is actually the first song that the three of us wrote together on our first album, and when we wrote that song I didn't have any real experience to pull from.

I was born with this love for music, and I say 'born with' because I don't really remember a day waking up and deciding that I'm going do to music. It's been all I've ever done and all I've ever wanted to do.

Nowadays, everybody assumes, when the wake up in the morning, if they have a question, it will get answered. Because they have the internet. No matter what the question is, someone will answer their question.

If you're asking if I would be foolish enough, or insulting enough, to write about people in my life that I respect and sell it to the masses as a "break-up song," I can't imagine doing that to people I love.

Carrie Fisher was the most remarkable person I've ever known. I made my first three albums in her house. 'Goodbye My Lover' was recorded in her bathroom. My life will not be nearly as much fun now she's gone.

It is a process of discovery. It's being quiet enough and undisturbed enough for a period of time so that the songs can begin to sort of peek out, and you begin to have emotional experiences in a musical way.

I'm always making music. I'm constantly making little musical recordings on my phone or on a little voice recorder I carry with me so I can remember these little pieces of music that eventually becomes songs.

I do believe in ghosts, but I haven't seen one. I can imagine that you cross over to the other side, some different dimension or whatever, but how do your clothes get there? Ghosts are always wearing clothes.

I'm dreaming of sleeping next to you and feeling like a lost little boy in a brand new town I'm counting my sheep and each one that passes is another dream to ashes And they all fall down. - Sleeping to Dream

When you talk about *NSYNC or Backstreet Boys - we were like the New Kids, and New Kids were like the Bee Gees. But Girl Radical will be the first ones, and that's a crazy idea. That's what got us so excited.

I never felt like I had a surface image to rely on that people would like - I always felt like my music would not be very fancy music, my voice is not very fancy, there is nothing hiding me from the audience.

I consider myself a product of Alaska. The love and the debt that I feel to my home state - you always want your hometown to be the proudest of you, and so it's heartbreaking to hear people say snarky things.

I'm looking for someone who works as hard as I do. Who loves their work as much as I do, so at the end of the night we have something real to talk about, something exciting that makes our blood flow and boil.

Everything starts with writing. I heard Nikki Giovanni and was blown away. I just thought 'wow'; she was writing from a black girl's perspective, and the imagery was so vivid that I started doing spoken word.

Sometimes I felt as a writer I was purging, and it almost hurt to purge to that level. Now it doesn't feel that way, maybe because I'm older. Maybe life has given me some punches, but it didn't knock me down.

I listen to all those kinds of music, from classic soul to hip-hop to Brazilian music to, you know, jazz to indie to alternative. So whatever. I listen to all if it. Classic rock and classic pop, all of that.

I studied African American studies, and I read these slave narratives and the escape narratives of people that were able to escape slavery and always found those stories intriguing and powerful and inspiring.

So we raise her up every morning, we take her down every night, we don't let her touch the ground and we fold her up right. On second thought, I do like to brag 'cause I'm mighty proud of the Ragged Old Flag.

[For Before the Dawn] it was in the hands of a fantastic drummer and percussionist and who drove it into another moment in time. It's such a poignant song and it was transformed into entirely different beast.

One day when I was 14 I put together a makeshift CV and walked into this weird boutique in Pinner, near where I lived, to ask if they needed a Saturday assistant. They didn't, but the owner took me on anyway.

It seems to me that most good protagonists are both clever and resourceful. They are intelligent and can fix things, both little and big. They can come up with inventive solutions others would never think of.

I was dating a guy once who spoke rudely to a taxi driver. I got out of the cab and walked home. Treat people with respect. I've waited tables, and that's why I just exceedingly overtip. It's exhausting work.

I got depressed so many times by my blue-collar life and self-conscious about the fact that I didn't go to college. I was always working super low-end jobs, being the complete opposite of what I wanted to be.

With the things that I love, I tried to put a couple seeds, a bunch of seeds in the ground and see what sprung up. Sometimes it was acting and sometimes it was music. But whatever it was I continued to plant.

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance. Never settle for the path of least resistance. Livin' might mean takin' chances but they're worth takin'. Lovin might be a mistake but it's worth makin'.

I've learned the lesson that when you're in the middle of something that seems overwhelming, or you're in a bad situation and it seems like it's the end of the world or whatever, then you learn that it's not.

It's hard either way, at home or on the bus, I think the hardest thing probably for me is going one second from being mom to right out on the stage and having to be that person too. It's hard to switch gears.

I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse.

I've never made a dime from a record sale in the history of my record deal. I've been very happy with my sales, and certainly my audience has been very supportive. I make a living going out and playing shows.

I have had many challenges in my life, including some very big ones when I was young and I've learned a lot of valuable lessons along the way. I have seen life from just about every angle you can see it from.

The worst thing about being famous? I think it's what everybody says.. the lack of privacy and the idea that you're not really allowed to make mistakes and everything that you do is viewed under a microscope.

The beast is the modern world that we live in! The material world. The physical world. The world of illusion that we think is real. We live for it; we're enslaved by it. And it will ultimately be our undoing.

The critics have been writing me off for 20 years. That's nothing new. As far as I know I still have plenty of fans and sell lots of records. Do I care what critics say about me? No, and I don't read reviews.

It depends on the scripts and the character and just everybody involved, the other actors and directors. It's just a gut feeling when you find something, you're like, 'Yes, I want to sink my teeth into that.'

I haven't thought about writing so much as potentially producing and finding my own projects to get into production. I want to be able to buy the rights to a story that I have read or a book that I have read.

I've been really aware of how important it is to me to just stay in the moment and enjoy it while it lasts. Because that's all you've got. If it ends, I'll move on to doing something else. If it lasts, great.

I play in bars all the time in the States, so I'm kind of used to it. I've just got off the road with the family in Australia, and I enjoyed it but it feels really good to be getting back to doing this stuff.

So I came home and I had a resume and everything, but the only job experience I had was just playing in bars and clubs on my summers off. So, I was temping and stuff during the day and playing music at night.

I felt my whole life like I didn't have a family, and I needed one. So I had to build one, and you build one with faith, hope, and the healing power of love - or you end up the 'Unabomber.' That's the choice.

The culture of New York is just impossible to replicate. It's such an incredible feeling to be walking on the streets of New York. You can literally find everything you need in a five block radius oftentimes.

I'm a collector of cartoons. All the Disney stuff, Bugs Bunny, the old MGM ones. It's real escapism, it's like everything's alright. It's like the world is happening now in a far away city. Everything's fine.

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