Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm John the Fourth, so I think there's a lot of things in life that have been truly handed to me by the hard work and the pain of others.
I'm attracted to artists like Frida Kahlo, because her work was her life, her questions, her outrage, her suffering, her pain. Everything is in her work.
Like everybody, I've had a lot of pain in my life and I'm a work in progress. You must have a true desire to see the world from a different point of view, and that comes with growing up.
And I think the first LP was perhaps too precious. It was our life's work up to that point; there was so much pain in trying to make the perfect statement. We couldn't relax and I think most people missed what we were trying to say.
Jazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul - the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.