A cello can sound like so many instruments, but it's only one, you know, like a guitar; it has percussive qualities. It can sing like the violin, you know, like a voice.
In the early '90s, when I really started to find my voice, I was reading a lot of books, and I was moved by the writers, like Chinua Achebe, and I wanted to be able to write rhymes that were as potent as what I was reading.
We are all born with genius. It's like our fairy godmother. But what happens in life is that we stop listening to our inner voices, and we no longer have access to this extraordinary ability to create poetry.
I have never had a vote, and I have raised hell all over this country. You don't need a vote to raise hell! You need convictions and a voice!
I'm always calling my doctor because I'm constantly injuring myself while on the road, like tearing a ligament, blasting my ears or losing my voice. Plus, I'm a total hypochondriac.
I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.
Over the past few years special interests have had a larger and larger say over who gets what in America, and the voices of average citizens are being shut out.
I think I can take responsibility for that in that I was the audience. I was the voice of sanity around whom all these crazies did their dance. And I reacted in the same way that a member of the audience would have reacted.
We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another - until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.
My main point is to entertain in a way that is unique and different from what anybody else id doing; to apply my voice in a way that nobody else in the industry is applying theirs.
I always vaguely knew I wanted to perform, but I haven't got the greatest singing voice and my dancing isn't up to scratch. Acting was really the only alternative. My parents have been really supportive throughout.
I could be ordering ham at the deli, and someone will turn around and look at me and kind of stare. They'll just look at me like, 'I know I know your voice, and I know I know your face.'
Often the inspiration to write music comes from the voices in your head. You’re not crazy. Just be thankful they are not making you rescue people in 20-degree weather at 2:30 in the morning in the forest.
Ninety-five percent of all writers who write do not get published, but 100 percent of all writers write because they have a voice in their head. The vast majority of writers simply write because they have to.
I think all comics borrow from each other. Only a few have an original voice, and I wasn't one of them. In the end, I couldn't figure out who to steal from, so I stopped doing it.
I did a lot of acting, funnily enough, unprofessionally, as a kid. From when I was 10 years old until I was about 19, I was always doing little sketches with my friends, and doing different accents and voices.
I used to do stuff at college. I could do voices. I could make some people laugh. I wasn't the class clown, but I knew I had this skill.
I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary jazz singers. But my intent is to become my own voice, to be able to interpret these songs in my own way.
Our job is to make manifest the story, to be it. In a sense, the theatre is such a big star itself, bigger than any Shakespearean actor I could hire, that we should take the opportunity to fill it with voice and verse and movement, not interpretation...
People from New York have been calling, to see if I'm still alive. When I answer the phone, you can hear the disappointment in their voice.
I did the voice of Cyclops on 'Shrek the Third'. I don't know how I got that. They said they wanted a Michael Chiklis type, and apparently it came down to me and Michael Chiklis, so how they gave it to me, I don't know.
