▶ "We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you're doing so."; "The way I feel today, as long as my health is good and I can handle myself well and people still come to my concerts, still buy my CDs, I'll keep playing until I feel like I can't."; "The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family. You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him, but you loved him. You just didn't know how other people would take it."; "Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning."; "I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed."; …"I don't think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow."; "You can do great things with low-tech stuff."; "You can do bigger and bigger things. For what?"; "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."; "Writers want to summarize: What does this mean? What did we learn from this? That's a very 19th-century way of thinking about art, because it assumes that it should make our lives better or teach us something."; "Why do you have to translate and decode things? Just let the image be. It will have a special kind of reality that it won't once it's decoded."; "When love is gone, there's always justice. And when justice is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi, Mom!"; "The world is a strange and wonderful place."; "The thing that's characteristic of my performance is that I literally do drag the whole studio onto the stage."; "The problem with prototypes is they don't always work."; "The only stuff I don't like are Broadway musicals. I hate them. I don't even like to talk about it. I can't bear musicals."; "The fewer expectations you have, the better."; "Something that has so much power must have life. Instruments have life."; "Performance art is about joy, about making something that's so full of kind of a wild joy that you really can't put into words."; "People only stutter at the beginning of the word. They're not afraid when they get to the end of the word. There's just regret."; "People are really suffering these days. There's a lot of corporate triumph and a lot of personal despair as they wonder what are they working for."; "Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better."; "One of the things I learned from working on the Olympics was, the world does not need another big multimedia show."; "My work is more about trying to ask good questions and not trying to come up with big shows. Every fashion company is doing that, every car company is doing that."; "My secret dream is to write an epic poem. That's probably the most pretentious thing I've said."; "My job is to make images and leave the decision-making and conclusion-drawing to other people."; "I've never really had a hobby, unless you count art, which the IRS once told me I had to declare as a hobby since I hadn't made money with it."; "I've been trying to avoid goal-oriented behavior."; "It's just such a great miracle when things do work, and they work for such a wild variety of crazy reasons."; "It's good to take a longer view and think, What would I really like to do if I had no limitations whatsoever?"; "I'm not usually where I think I am. It's kind of spooky."; "I'm an average enough person to point to the things I've gotten to see that are awe-inspiring."; "I'm a real workaholic."; "If there are bases on the moon, that would be the end of the moon as we know it."; "I so much appreciate it when anybody tries to make something and tries to be an artist - I'm happy to see the work."; "I see and write things first as an artist, second as a woman, and third as a New Yorker. All three have built-in perspectives that aren't neutral."; "I have written a lot about snakes. There's something pretty primordial about it."; "I have written a few children's books. The first book that I wrote was for children. It was called "The Package", and it was a mystery story in pictures. It had no words."; "I don't take compliments so well. I always hang my head and shuffle and kind of try to immediately forget."; "As an artist I'd choose the thing that's beautiful more than the one that's true."; "As a New Yorker, I'm someone who lives on an island and looks across to America."; "A lot of the work in United States is highly critical of technology. I'm using 15,000 watts of power and 18 different pieces of electronic equipment to say that."; "A lot of artists who have a certain style are expected to more or less keep doing their style. It's so easy to get into that rut of production."; "You would not exist if you did not have something to bring to the table of life."; "You can practice to learn a technique, but I'm more interested in conceiving of something in the moment."; "You can practice to attain knowledge, but you can't practice to attain wisdom."; "Without wisdom, the future has no meaning, no valuable purpose."; "While knowledge may provide useful point of reference, it cannot become a force to guide the future."; "When I was in my early teens, I remember coming to the conclusion that your life never ends."; "When I was coming up, I practiced all the time because I thought if I didn't I couldn't do my best."; "We are eternally linked not just to each other but our environment."; "The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way."; "The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique."; "The thing that we possess, that machines don't, is the ability to exhibit wisdom."; "The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness."; "The music becomes something that is its own entity."; "Since time is a continuum, the moment is always different, so the music is always different."; "See, there were certain rules I'd always used, and people like Trane, they would break those rules."; "One thing that attracted me to Buddhism was the support for this larger vision of values."; "One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing."; "Nobody told me I was a child prodigy."; "Music is the tool to express life - and all that makes a difference."; "Music happens to be an art form that transcends language."; "Miles' sessions were not typical of anybody else's sessions. They were totally unique."; "Jazz is about being in the moment."; "I've been a religious, spiritual person for a long time."; "It's not the style that motivates me, as much as an attitude of openness that I have when I go into a project."; "It's not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz."; "I'm always looking to create new avenues or new visions of music."; "I'm always interested in looking forward toward the future. Carving out new ways of looking at things."; "I think there's a great beauty to having problems. That's one of the ways we learn."; "Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am."; "You can never get silence anywhere nowadays, have you noticed?"; "Words can be very powerful. I find them very difficult."; "Women! I have no idea. I don't know anything about women at all. They're a complete mystery to me."; "When I stopped touring in the early '80s for a few years, it was a mistake looking back. I lost touch with my audience in a way and I think that was a bad career move."; "The quality of the writing, really. Simple as that. Beautiful words. It's very nice as a singer to do great songs, which have wonderful lyrics and strong feelings underneath the song."; "Secretly, I wanted to look like Jimi Hendrix, but I could never quite pull it off."; "Performing was terrifying."; "Oh yes, much, because music is just something that comes to you. You don't question it."; "I've had quite a few moments I've liked, so it's good enough."; "It's not a very high failure rate if you choose people that you really like the sound of."; "It's nice to know that there are several different avenues I could pursue."; "It's fabulous when you do that, when you discover somebody who you like, when you kind of feel those feelings, even though he articulates them better."; "In New York, you couldn't wish for a nicer audience, or in L.A., Chicago, Boston. But when you get into secondary markets, they don't have a clue."; "I'm not really sure what it was, the best moment. You always hope it's to come."; "I'd love to follow the Tour de France one day. It's a really exciting spectacle. I've only seen it once as it was coming into Paris and that was very exciting for me. I have memories of that."; "I suppose young people think football is glamorous - soccer - it's big money and the stars of it, they look good and have a great big house and a huge Ferrari."; "Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought."; "There ought to be a law against necessity."; "Leave the atom alone."; "Follow the yellow brick road."; "Follow the fellow who follows a dream."; "Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead."; "April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom, holiday tables under the trees."; "I don't really go for the swagger thing too much."; "I need to go someplace faraway that doesn't have telephones and doesn't have a record player and doesn't have movie theaters and people walking down the street in order to not do anything."; "A lot of places we go, when they see the organ coming in, they're expecting rock and roll, but after they hear us play they like it. To me, guitar cuts through-it carries more than organ. But organ has got more guts."; "It has been extraordinary, wonderful, I've been three feet off the ground since I made that first record."; "What's meant to be will always find a way."; "I don't do the same show on any two nights."; "I don't think you can ever do your best. Doing your best is a process of trying to do your best."; "It seems that the greatest difficulty is to find the end. Don't try to find it, it's there already."; "I think that most people who write about music just want to fill some paper. They're not really interested in getting to the heart of something. Otherwise, they wouldn't write what they write."; "I didn't care whose name was on it, I just wanted to get in that Top Ten."; "Artists who write songs... what they're going through usually comes through in their music."; "Country music is just country. It's going to shift around a little bit, doing some different instrumentations, different production styles. But it will always come back to what you heard at the Opry. Nobody wants it to change."; "A lot of those little things that I really like doing are just moments of cool articulation, just little moments of phrasing that probably go over everybody's head."; "I don't meditate before I play or compose, but I see playing and composing as meditative acts."; "I don't think you can replaces great themes. But I think people do want to hear fresh arrangements of them. They don't want to hear them played the same way all the time."; "I used to be hung up on my figure, but it's a waste of time. I don't believe in diets. Have four pints one night, be healthy the next."; "If I would be in this business for business, I wouldn't be in this business."; "But I'm trying not to be cynical - I don't want to be one of those people who has a cool opportunity and blows it. It's really amazing what's happening to me."; "The popular song is America's greatest ambassador."; "I do like to shock and surprise people. When it's all in good fun, of course."; "Don't whine - laugh."; "I didn't plan on rock-n-roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock-n-roll with jazz, and I thought I could make some money playing music."; "I have been a victim of stereotypes. I come from Latin America and to some countries, we are considered 'losers,' drug traffickers, and that is not fair because that is generalizing."; "I want the people of New Jersey to jump off a cliff like Kurt Vonnegut so I can show them how to fly. This way, nobody needs to grow any wings, which would be impossible anyway because we're humans and not some kind of bird."; "If I told you the words, you wouldn't believe them anyway."; "I'm a terrible trumpet player."; "A rose must remain with the sun and the rain or its lovely promise won't come true."; "In some ways, I've always approached singing as acting, and the voice is just like a way of carrying the song."; "If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high you'd laugh and say nothing that simple, but you've been told many times before messiah's point you to the door though no one's got the guts to leave the temple."; "Almost all the fans I meet are pretty cool people. They're intelligent and tend to think about things a bit more than your average rock'n'roll fans: sensible people I wouldn't mind having a drink with."; "I'm not altogether sure what I'm going to do for that. I think it will be a lot more low key than the other two I've done. Dare I say it, a bit more relaxing."; "I really don't have that many run-ins. People by and large are very nice to me."; "Each of our 900 shows so far was different - maybe that's what makes the fans come back to our gigs time and again. And that they're always part of the show. Phish concerts are a communal experience."; "For 37 years I've practiced 14 hours a day, and now they call me a genius."; "I don't know what I would have done without believing in God. His support gives me power and energy to continue to be optimistic, to smile, not to be depressed. Sometimes, if things are not going so well, I don't cry. I say maybe it's meant to be."; "Americans are crazy. They have this fascination with throwing their shoes on stage. I've been to a lot of shows in me life, some good and some bad. But I was never moved to take off me shoes and throw it at the lead singer."; "An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany."; "In society, one doesn't tell the truth, one tells the exact opposite."; "Anytime you get an audience that's paying attention, you enjoy it more."; "Be true to yourself, and, um, don't worry about some large companies' quarterly profit index."; "And remember don't high post when you're far from home, and high posting when you're all alone."; "I can't understand people calling themselves religious and being hateful. If a preacher is preaching hate, to fear God that's not religion, that's not helping humanity, that's organizing an army to defeat somebody."; "In summer winter rain or sun, it's good to be on horseback."; "I thought the '60s was the most exciting time and the most vital music, and we were really together as one mind then. Then afterwards, the songs and the bad drugs, that took its toll."; "I can't believe the pro-choicers attitude toward unborn children-to me it's the ultimate liberal cause, to defend those without a voice."; "Change is always happening. That's one of the wonderful things about jazz music."; "We didn't have any instruments, so I had to use my guitar."; "That's what it's about, how society changes people but people can also change society. It only takes a few people to do things and help themselves instead of sitting around on their asses. She has a very global outlook on life and all sorts of things."; "I'm one of the ruins that Cromwell knocked about a bit."; "One of my side strange abilities is to hear a good song, no matter how it's being performed. Even if you get a bad performance, I can still hear that there's a good song."; "They hear it come out, but they don't know how it got there. They don't understand that's life's way of talking. You don't sing to feel better. You sing 'cause that's a way of understanding life."; "I'm an American before any party preference."; "All through school, I was losing hundreds of pounds in school, so that's a journey - that's an old journey. I'm tired of that. I know that road."; "By the way, you won't put that thing in about me wanting to have sex on a football pitch, will you?"; "Always the heavy and never the hero - that's me."; "Any art communicates what you're in the mood to receive."; "He's a couple sandwiches short of a picnic."; "I've always been a direct guy."; "I think it took me a while to convince Nashville that what I do is genuine and my heart's in the right place, and I love country music."; "Art revolves around creating something that isn't there."; "After using four different languages on an album, it's tough to decide which one I'm gonna actually learn to speak. I always study the lyric, make sure I know what I'm singing, and try to get the pronunciation as perfect as possible."; "I am constantly asked why I never made other films after 'There's No Business Like Show Business,' the answer is I was never asked."; "Here is my theory on this one. If you write things down, if there is a mystery and you try and explain it, once you've written it down for permanent, in due time, it'll be proven stupid."; "I don't sing for anybody. I wouldn't sing for the Queen dear."; "If you go out to Hollywood you'll find a lot of fantastic plastic people there in the business and a lot of people in life generally. They find it so hard to be themselves that they have to be plastic."; "Come on, come on! And there'll be no turning back! You were only killing time and it can kill you right back. Come on, come on! It's time to burn up the fuse. You got nothing to do and even less to lose."; "I listened to Kelley's record with pleasure. Great to hear real music with respect for the righteous roots. Her singing is outstanding - no frills, down to the bone and intense."; "Whiskey is by far the most popular of all remedies that won't cure a cold."; "Each instrument has something to say to you. It's got its own character. Each horn has its own character and will say to you certain things. If you violate that, it's almost a sacrilege!"; "I don't care about the rules. In fact, if I don't break the rules at least 10 times in every song then I'm not doing my job properly."; "Anyone who thinks they're sexy needs their head checked."; "I'd probably be famous now if I wasn't such a good waitress."; "It's a little gross to put yourself in every song. I mean, how interesting do people really think you are?"; "The ability to play the clarinet is the ability to overcome the imperfections of the instrument. There's no such thing as a perfect clarinet, never was and never will be."; "Between now and then and I just felt it was ready and it was a long enough period gone by. I obviously didn't want to hurt anybody, you know. It was done out of a genuine memorial or tribute whatever you want to call it."; "It don't mean a thing If it ain't got that swing."; "Basically we just created our own label, but again we just did it to document our own music and create our own thing, so the major labels were just always out of our picture, we're not interested."; "And if you had an, an opportunity to have a hot meal, you did. That was the cook. But you didn't stop and say, This is dinnertime and Oh wait it's five o'clock, it's time to eat for supper."; "I have always respected everyone's religion. As I say, there is only one God and a lot of confused people."; "I've had about 140 albums released, and I've done everything I wanted to do."; "I can't even picture being without rock 'n'roll."; "It's not just a revue where one song is done, then another. There are concepts and ideas at work."; "File sharing is our radio; that's the way people hear our stuff."; "I don't really think about having had a hard life. It was just my life, and it's all I knew. It made me who I am - all the good and bad - and it's where all of the songs on Here For The Party came from. I've lived them all."; "I don't regret any decisions I've made in my life."; "This is the kind of problem you want to have! Country radio has been great to me my whole career. I can't thank those folks enough."; "Now everybody's got a crazy notion of their own. Some like to mix up with a crowd, some like to be alone. It's no one elses' business as far as I can see, but every time that I go out the people stare at me, with me little ukulele in me hand."; "I'm a performer. I've tried everything there is."; "If you're going to start with melody you'll need some tympani, I think."; "The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation. I can't contrive a song."; "I have done my time living on the run. I'm British and I want to come home."; "Having my first number one single and being able to travel to places I've never been before has been amazing. The tour was also fantastic. There are so many things which I've experienced this year which I never even dreamed of."; "Be on your toes tonight - or I'll be on yours tomorrow."; "Being in front of all these people staring at you and it helps you to dig down and become more emotional and get lost in it as you're feeding on people's energy."; "If you don't know what it is, don't mess with it."; "I love it. When they stop imitating me then I'll start wondering where I'm going wrong. Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new."; "When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone, in the air. You can never capture it again."; "I don't think Jimi committed suicide in the conventional way. He just decided to exit when he wanted to."; "But the great thing, and the horrible thing about the web is you can just throw stuff up there and it doesn't cost anybody anything."; "It was he who impressed, time and again, the necessity of singing as nature intended, and - I remember - he constantly warned, don't let the public know that you work. So I went slowly. I never forced the voice."; "I love L.A. for the beach and stuff, that's the reason I live here."; "I always challenge myself. I get out in deep water and I always try to get back. But I get hung up. The audience never knows, but that's when I smile the most, when I show the most ivory."; "I would say that longtime fans of the Rolling Stones will be thrilled with these results, and new fans will understand why they're the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world."; "How do I know why Miles walks off the stage? Why don't you ask him? And besides, maybe we'd all like to be like Miles, and just haven't got the guts."; "But the greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out. You want the listener to find the song on their own. If you give too much away, it takes away from the imagination."
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