We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to wh...
Once you've been on tour six, seven years, you get an idea of what works and what doesn't work universally. There will be some crowds that we just can't play a song, but we've got 90% of a show that we know is going to be a hit with the Lupe Fiasco f...
I wouldn't go so far as to make 'You Don't Own Me' a tango or 'It's My Party' a hip-hop thing. Believe me, those things have been suggested to me. But I thought if I could stay true to the song, the arrangements would work. I'm really enjoying singin...
My feelings are, if you're gonna lead a rock n' roll lifestyle, don't let it affect your work. I know I can stay up all night and still come in the next day and write a song, and nothing will stop me from doing it. I expect the same from everyone els...
The Bowery was a place that would let us do original songs - not just covers - but we would have to work for tips, so we learned how to work an audience. In order to keep our jobs, we had to keep people happy, so that meant playing the latest Lynyrd ...
We managed to put together a compilation that had some creativity to it. In the meantime I was listening to the free radio stations and I noticed that during their war coverage they were playing these songs born out of the Vietnam War that were all c...
Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the tem...
Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of of mortal inventions. "No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from." "But what if he is your friend?" Achilles has asked him, feet kicked up on the wall of the rose-quartz cave. "O...
No I am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be Am an attendant lord one that will do To swell a progress start a scene or two Advise the prince no doubt an easy tool Deferential glad to be of use Politic cautious and meticulous Full of high sentence b...
I probably won’t play a song the same way tomorrow as I play it today. Only a pitchman says the same thing the same way twice, without varying a word. If music is a language, why don’t people use it with the same subtlety, nuance, and facility as...
As a songwriter, I'm gathering clues and possibilities all the time, whether I see a piano that day or not. I've tried to explain to people how I collect these dispatches, because I think anybody can do what I'm talking about. Once I do plug in, I mi...
We're in Des Moines, Iowa today, were in Omaha, Nebraska yesterday and Boise, Idaho the day before. When we landed at the airport in Boise, from Portland, Oregon this lady from our plane came up from behind as we walked down the terminal. She approac...
We have been expropriated from our own language by television, from our songs by reality TV contests, from our flesh by mass pornography, from our city by the police and from our friends by wage-labor.
When had I turned into a 5-yr-old girl? At the very least, I needed to get my libido under control before the song finished, because I didn’t think that my raging hard-on would be a good icebreaker. I thought smugly.
He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
Troy smiled down at her, and her heart jumped into her throat. The lights turned his skin colors. Red, green, blue. Glimpses of every shade of Troy, and they all looked good. The song ended, and the world seemed to stop, just her and Troy, standing i...
And waking, once again, face smudged into Andrea's couch, the red quilt humped around her shoulders, smelling coffee, while Andrea hummed some Tokyo pop song to herself in the next room, dressing, in a gray morning of Paris rain.
There's death and life, you see. We all shine on. A leaf, a star, a song, a laugh. Notice the little things, because somebody is reaching out to you. ...Somebody loves you.
I want to write a song about retaliation called, "Oh Yeah, and I Faked Every Orgasm...While You Were Out of Town.
Our eyes met and locked as the song came to a halt, followed by a screaming conclusion from the crowd, girls around us pressing me into the stage, forcing all the air out of my lungs, but I’d forgotten about doing anything so basic as breathing.
There are still Ava Maddoxes to find and sets to create and girls to kiss and colleges to attend. It's possible that someday I will hear a patsy Cline song and the heartbreak will barely register. It will be some distant, buried feeling. I won't reme...
