When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn't believe that we were mortal.
I wouldn't want to hear Beethoven without beautiful bass, the cellos, the tuba. It's very important. Hip-hop has thunderous bass. And so does Beethoven. If you don't have the bass, it's like being amputated. It's like you have no legs.
I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any attention at all. Sometimes it's me, or a composite of me and other people. Sometimes it's not me at all.
What brings a real and lasting joy is our relationships with God, and our love for His other children He has put in our lives. It's people; friends and family that fulfil us. All else, fame, popularity, beauty, is so fleeting.
I am so much happier when I am doing the things that make me me, and that's living by my standards and doing the things I love, using my talents, however random they are, to share with other people. That's what makes me happy.
You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself...the height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. ...And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who can...
You know, there's a tremendous amount of genetic propensity not necessarily for what TV shows you like but for literally how you view the world, how you react to things, how things touch you and how things move you.
Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.
There are a lot of musicians who are still desperately trying to pretend that it's 1998 and by having a huge marketing campaign, they somehow believe that they can sell 10 million records. That's delusional. No one sells 10 million records. The days ...
I'm perfectly happy for my videos to be on YouTube, whether I'm getting paid for them or not. If they're on YouTube, people will see them. If for some reason my videos get taken down from YouTube, well, I apologize. If it was up to me they'd all be u...
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.
The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep...
I've had journals ever since I was really little. Sometimes I write poems and stuff, but for the most part I write down what happens to me during the day that I don't want to forget. So I have books filled with little things like that.
A lot of the songs on '2' are pretty personal, but even if I'm writing about something like that, I still tend to keep it pretty simple and open-ended. I like the idea of people listening to my album and it meaning something to me but maybe meaning s...
I am very curvy, so the vintage stores suit me better than most designers. I just can't seem to give up crisps, or make my boobs shrink for that matter. Alas, I will never fit a size zero.
I've always been interested in how fast-moving our identity is and that I've never been able to pin down who I truly am. That inspires me to write, because I feel like that cements me a bit, in that I find my identity in being an artist.
When you are in the studio, you don't have anybody to feed off of; meanwhile, when you are playing live, you interact with people and you feel the energy in the room. When the crowd is going crazy, that definitely impacts your vocal performance. I pr...
To be diagnosed with cancer was a frightening thing, and my first reaction was sheer panic, but I was really fortunate that the cancer was caught at such an early stage that I didn't need chemo or radiotherapy. But I know that cancer is a chronic con...
The equipment you've got really dictates what you're going to do. When I started touring, there were no monitors, so I had to take the sound from the hall, and of course it was on a delay, so I would sing, and then I would hear it back, but later. It...
After a show, I'll get the 16-year-old white kid whose lip is pierced, his head is shaved and his parents hate him, and the young gangster from the screwed-up 'hood, and they say that now they realize there's someone out there who thinks like they do...
I find it odd seeing a DJ playing to huge audiences. I know that people have been doing it for a while, but the fact that it's been embraced so much in America now and it's become like this new, big thing, I find it slightly odd.
