there's time for laughing and there's time for crying— for hoping for despair for peace for longing —a time for growing and a time for dying: a night for silence and a day for singing but more than all(as all your more than eyes tell me)there is ...
I'm always like, 'I can't believe I sound like my mother.' I remember running out of the house telling, 'Put your shoes on or you're going to get sick!' That's an old wives' tale, but it's like some weird mind control that I would be like that.
Let me tell you something: when you dance, you are the greatest dancer who has ever lived. And when you sing, you will have the courage to raise your voice to the heavens, knowing that you may never get an answer.
If there is a religious agency in our lives, it has to appear in the manner of our times. Not from on high, but a revelation that hides itself in our culture, it will be ground-level, on the street, it'll be coming down the avenue in the traffic, har...
I don't know where Hank Aaron will break Ruth's record but I can tell you one thing - ten years from the day he hits it three million people will say they were there.
But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you that's the center of it, that is it. It's almost like there's something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if you're a songwriter that...
If a fan comes up and it is a middle-aged lady, it is probably from 'Prime'; if it is a younger girl, it is probably from when I guest-starred on 'One Tree Hill.' And if it is, like, a skateboard kid or a hipster kid, I can tell they are 'How to Make...
They lie about marijuana. Tell you pot-smoking makes you unmotivated. Lie! When you're high, you can do everything you normally do just as well — you just realize that it's not worth the fucking effort. There is a difference.
I don't have a favorite song that I've written. But I do have a favorite song: 'Always on My Mind,' the Willie Nelson version. If I could sing it like he do, I would sing it every night. I like the story it tells.
I became the storyteller of South Side Chicago. I used an old Kiwi liquid shoe polish as a microphone. I'd go around the house interviewing everybody, telling stupid jokes, doing voices. I mimicked Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis Jr., people on 'Laugh-In...
The stab from a friend is the most painful to bear. Just before you tell everyone about your one sided story, remember you're not perfect yourself. Go ahead and remove the knife from your back, run to the Cross for forgiveness and healing.
I can't tell you how many people have asked me to show them Stray Cat Strut and that little diminished run on the C. I guess my brain is wired backwards. I don't know what possessed me to do that, but I did.
In kindergarten, we had this Irish Catholic headmistress called Sister Leonie, and I remember she would tell us, say, to put the crayons in the box. I remember thinking, 'Why is everyone finding this so easy? Why should the crayons be in the box?'
There was a lot of dancing in '76, '78, in the '80s. A lot of dancing. The burn years. A lot of dancing. And for a while, working fit in with all that. 'Moonlighting' - that wasn't acting. It was people telling me 'Let's create a character who is you...
Each of my novels has come from a different place, and the processes are not always entirely conscious. I have lived off and on in America for a number of years and so have accumulated observations, found things interesting, been moved to tell storie...
I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I was, and that would have come out even if I didn't want it.
African narratives in the West, they proliferate. I really don't care anymore. I'm more interested in the stories we tell about ourselves - how, as a writer, I find that African writers have always been the curators of our humanity on this continent.
I got along better with the guys than with the girls. Only two girls came up to talk to me. Later I found out they were telling their boyfriends, 'If you talk to her, I'll kill you.' It's always rough with that high school thing.
I mean, making simulations of what you're going to build is tremendously useful if you can get feedback from them that will tell you where you've gone wrong and what you can do about it.
I think that there's a particular type of person who goes into children's theater, and then goes into theater in high school. There was something about the guys I knew in theater, we were all very vulnerable. You could tell that at some point we were...
I really fell into drama school - I had a lot of lot of luck. I didn't take criticism very well while I was there; in fact, I took it personally. With every note I got, I felt like they were telling me I was a bad person.
