The Band is probably the ultimate example of people taking all kinds of music, from gospel to blues to mountain music to folk music to on and on and on and on and putting them all in this big pot and mixing up a new gumbo.
One of my problems is I'm not really sure if I slot into rock or not. I've always tried to combine world music, folk, jazz, blues and rock, and have done since Traffic.
The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.
My big influences are Joni Mitchell, and a lot of classical and Indian music, as well as Nina Simone and the personal blues and jazz of Billie Holiday. Other influences for me include Bjork, Nick Drake, and Sufjan Stevens.
I got put out of my church choir because my pastor said, 'We can't have baby sister singing the blues and coming in here and singing on Sunday morning.'
There was a point - when I was a kid - where I said I wanted to be like Luke Skywalker, with blond hair and blue eyes. My mom right there told me to never be ashamed of who I am.
The whole world loves American movies, blue jeans, jazz and rock and roll. It is probably a better way to get to know our country than by what politicians or airline commercials represent.
Enzo: Don't look at Jaques as if he was a human being, he comes from another planet.
[Waiting for Enzo] Roberto: It's not like him to be late. Of course, sometimes he doesn't show up at all.
[haggling with a fish vendor] Uncle Louis: Two DOLLARS? You didn't even need to catch the fish! It died of CANCER!
Adèle: He's not the problem. I'm missing something. I'm all messed up. I'm crazy.
. . . there was little to choose between Jews and Catholics. The Jews had holidays that turned up out of the blue and the Catholics had children in much the same way.
Growing up, I listened to a lot of jazz and blues records - John Coltrane and Etta James. I was also really into Radiohead and the BeeGees.
In 1940 I came across a record by Jimmy Yancey. I can't say how important that record is. From then on, all I wanted to do was play the blues.
We are just a pixel in the canvas of the universe. Shifting colours, sometimes green, sometimes blue, sometimes red, and sometimes black, to fit in this grandness.
A few small changes in your DNA can turn your eyes blue, make you lactose intolerant or put some curl in your hair.
My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden.
You have a political and media elite who have an idiom by which they describe politics. It's highly, highly polarised. It's right, left, red, blue, up, down, victorious, crushed.
Parenthood always comes as a shock. Postpartum blues? Postpartum panic is more like it. We set out to have a baby; what we get is a total take-over of our lives.
Some people hate lime-green; red has all this emotional baggage. Blue seems to be overall one of the more positive colors, and a little more serious than yellow.
Life is beautiful. Like a beautiful blue wave, it ebbs and flows, sometimes gushing forth and sometimes receding quietly.
