I never feel burdened or overwhelmed by my work. People tell you to find something you love for a career, and I have. That makes me feel very lucky.
I'd love to tell actors about all the things they don't need to worry about. Less is more. If you have it inside, you don't need to show too much. People pick up on things.
It's horrid to be called a Shakespearean actor because that's incredibly limiting, and we love acting. We like telling stories; anything that excites us we want to be a part of. Science fiction is fun, too!
I love the truth. Tell the truth and live the truth, because we've seen enough lies and look what it's doing.
But if you really love to write and you really love to tell stories and you really love to draw, you just have to keep doing it no matter what anybody says.
When the news wants to tell you something is important, they put dramatic theme music behind it. They scare you into watching the story.
I think dissonance in music makes you think. It isn't, 'Oh, that's a pretty melody I can whistle.' You have to sit down and listen to tell it apart from other things.
I always tell people I write songs, but I'm a writer. It's a difference. I can write songs to music, but I can write a story. I can see ideas spark in me.
I've always been drawn to stories and telling them; whether it was through being a part of theater when I was a little kid, or film, or with music, there's just been an innate desire to feel that connection.
It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.
I've learned how much of an impact that music has on people. I get messages all the time from people telling me what my music means to them and what it has done to them.
Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about.
People ask who I am as an artist, who I am as a person. I don't ever want to tell them who I am; you can find that out in the music.
I don't think shoving my butt into people's faces will tell them anything about who I am. How is that connecting to your audience? What is that doing for your music?
I can see the music. I know what it looks like. I know what color it is. The words come easy, the tears come easy, and the joy comes easy. The music tells you what to do.
One of the things that helps me tell a story through music is to create a character. I have to have a muse, whether it's Frida Kahlo, Martha Graham, Marlene Dietrich, or Pippi Longstocking.
I am a futurist, projecting trends in science into the next decades and century, but ironically my two daughters - one is a neuroscientist and the other is a pastry chef - tell me that my taste in music is positively prehistoric.
I always tell people that the music industry may be frustrating sometimes, but the singing never gets old. It's something I grew up doing, and I take the bitter with the sweet.
Every girl likes to just rock out when they put music on in their room - I learned that personally when fans would tell us how much they loved to make up their own dances to Cheetah Girls songs.
I always tell myself, 'When I'm working on my record, I won't cut my hair.' I get so focused on the music that I'm not really going to the hair shop and getting cut up. I just have one thing to focus on.
I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it's a better way of telling the stories.
