Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As soon as you learn to never give up, you have to learn the power and wisdom of unconditional surrender, and that one doesn't cancel out the other; they just exist as contradictions. The wisdom of it comes as you get older.
Anybody that's from somewhere that's made it in music outside of New York or L.A., if it's a unique enough place, they'll always say, 'Dude's from Minnesota!' Or wherever, you know? So that's how I got the Philly connection.
Every time that God navigates my ship, there's nothing cerebral going on. There's very little thought. It's almost as if I have the directions. Every time I try to do it myself, I'm conjuring up my own concoction and trying.
Please make me empty, if I'm empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I'm not alone! I cannot bear this loneliness. Above all it is loneliness.
It's hard for anyone, no matter what their age, having a child and trying to make a career, but you survive. My mum always had the motto 'You made your bed, you lie in it' and I guess I had to take responsibility for myself.
Rock 'n' roll doesn't glorify God. You can't drink out of God's cup and the devil's cup at the same time. I was one of the pioneers of that music, one of the builders. I know what the blocks are made of because I built them.
Obviously, I feel a great sense of responsibility being a good parent and raising my children. I don't take that job very lightly. Who they are, what they become and what they contribute to the world is very important to me.
Kids know what's going on. They always respond to The Beatles, for instance. Doesn't matter when they were born, they always seem to respond. Show me a kid who innately doesn't like The Beatles, and I'll show you a bad seed.
After people work hard and cope with the pressures of life throughout the week, going out to a show or tuning in to watch some characters in cowboy clothes, singing and playing songs about real life is something I relate to.
Don't ever believe someone that tells you "you're the next big thing". You're not. I'm not. Those people will come and go. As artists, we're all just trying to make a living doing what we love. No different from anyone else.
To be honest I listen to the female opinion on my photos. If all the girls in the office choose a certain shot, even if I don't like it, it becomes a front runner because, really, what do I know about how others perceive me?
I want to continue to grow. To me, the biggest sin of all sins, is to be given a gift, a talent, because it's actually a gift from God, to take that and not cultivate it and make it grow, that's the biggest sin in the world.
I love to read. I wish I could advise more people to read. There’s a whole new world in books. If you can’t afford to travel, you travel mentally through reading. You can see anything and go any place you want to in reading.
A military audience is kind of weird. Pretty much how you would imagine a troop of males that haven't seen a female in a long time and have been stuck in a base camp in the middle of nowhere for too long without any alcohol.
I walk out my front door in New York and I'm out on the street and there are people everywhere. L.A. is so much more spread out, so it's really easy in L.A. to have a little more isolation and to just not see as many people.
You have climate change and antibiotic resistance which are two of the biggest horses of the apocalypse, and they're basically breathing on our necks, and there's no political will or effort being expended to deal with them.
Personal relationships are usually my biggest inspirations for writing my songs. The best way for me to write a song is to visualise the story in my head, and I start humming a melody, and before you know it, a song is born.
As a woman I think we are capable of doing so many things. There is great ability to compartmentalise - to focus on the task at hand, do it well and then move on to the next one, while having another million things going on.
It will kill four times as many Americans as AIDS will over the next decade. I feel that what ever kind of disability God has given me, as an entertainer and as a public figure, it is so I can be a representative for others.
I already had high blood pressure. I have hypertension. And I think the chemo was just too much for my kidneys. And they went into failure. And that was September 12th of 2008. And the doctor rushed me right to the hospital.
As a songwriter, the minute you start having sex, you can totally see the difference in the writing. You become an adult - that's kind of the whole backbone of it, really, your identity as a person and what sex means to you.
I have disciplined myself when I'm working. When I discovered art, I realized that one could keep that search going within creation. But I also realize that in order to create the art, you have to stay, you can't go too far.
When I perform, I always opt for communication with God, and in pursuit of communicating with God, you can enter some very dangerous territory. I also have come to realize that total communication with God is physical death.
We are just at the studio, me and my choreographers, we are spending like 30 nights and we are thinking, what is my next dance move? Because in Korea there are huge expectations about my dancing. So it was a lot of pressure.
Lets be clear, Dolly Parton is a rapper. Somewhere before all the country, I don't know what happens up there in the mountains when you're growing up, but she has been spitting rhymes for a very long time - 50 years I'd say.
The sound of 'Take Her Up to Monto' and 'Hairless Toys' is the sound of me and the producer in the studio doing whatever we like. There is no reference. It's too easy to be referential now; I'm trying to find something else.
When I get all focused on songwriting, I get into all the marketing and promotion that we do to make it happen. Then the right song comes along and blows it all out of the water. The right song will do it for you every time.
I still want to be the cute maknae of the group so rather than growing out my moustache and saying that I've matured and that "I'm a man", I would rather show people how I've grown up little by little through my personality.
There were bars that began to have acoustic musicians play, it was 1970: Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, America, The Eagles, all that kind of stuff was popular. It was very easy for me to just kind of move in and be noticed.
I come from a place of darkness when I write because I'm always trying to figure things out. It's kind of like my own therapy when I write music. It's me working through my own problems hopefully. And putting it into a song.
I don't think I have changed my personality as much as I have evolved as a human. Before the name change, I was very timid, very self-conscious. Just not very confident. When I changed my name, it came from a place of power.
There's part of our brain that we shut off when we're in the studio. There's part of our brain that we turn on when we are out doing an interview or promoting something or waking up at six in the morning for hair and makeup.
I do write nice songs about the guys who are nice to me! Eventually, I'm sure one of them will write a response - that's a pretty scary concept, actually! But I make sure I only write bad songs about the ones who deserve it.
So as far as leadership and patriotism goes, I think it's really important that those things have to take place. And I think he's the best Democratic candidate we've had since Bill Clinton. And that's coming from a Democrat.
When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers.
Plagiarize! Plagiarize, Let no one else's work evade your eyes, Remember why the good Lord made your eyes, So don't shade your eyes, But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize... Only be sure always to call it please "research".
I recall this sergeant's informing me and my "room-mates" of this rather deplorable fact the army didn't have any official, excuse me, didn't have no official song and suggested that we work on this in our copious free time.
You know when you throw a party, you think people will show up and no one will like each other. It's like that with music - parts of your musical psyche have never met other parts. You wonder if you should get them together.
I believe in eating. I think women especially have this fear of eating, and I think there is a whole euphoric plane you can rise to when you have a good meal. You sit down and with every bite you honestly just say thank you.
I used to buy vinyl. Today, if you do put out a record on a label, traditionally, most people are going to hear it via a leak that happens two weeks - if not two months - before it comes out. There's no real way around that.
I believe I am happy. I don't think I have achieved happiness in all areas of my life yet. As far as success is concerned, my family is being taken care of. But I think the last level of happiness would be becoming a father.
The beautiful thing about my intelligence is that it doesn't really come in one specific department. So even if something hasn't happened to me, I have information on how to get you through whatever you may be going through.
I love to read things that have moral messages, and I love to hear stories where it's not just a hook, you have to follow the story, you have to listen to the message of the song, and get it and use it in your everyday life.
Uncle Sam took up the challenge in the year of '33 For the farmer and the factory and all of you and me. He said, "Roll along Columbia. You can ramble to the sea, But river while you're ramblin' you can do some work for me."
I better quit my talking 'cause I told you all I know But please remember, pardner, wherever you may go The people are building a peaceful world, and when the job is done, That'll be the biggest thing that man has ever done.
It's like with feminism. We talk a lot about feminism meaning complete freedom, and for some people, that means, like, 'Free the nipple!' But there's another end of the feminist spectrum, and that's where people like me are.
I'd rather talk to people about their personal spiritual practices or what they believe love is. I'm born to do that. Could I enter into the political realm and dive into that? Sure, but I don't think I would want to do that.
Yazoo is the name of an old blues label and also a town in America. I like it because it doesn't mean a thing, it has no immediate connotations. That's what I hate about so many names today - they're so obviously fashionable.
I love when people are coming up and they're working hard and you can see that they're really focused on the process to their music. I really dig that. As a musician, it's nice to see people who really care about the process.
I've always written poetry but I didn't realise it was a therapy for me until I was maybe 15. That's when my singing started to come together as well because I was listening to so much jazz. What I love I will always embrace.