I'm very much a traditionalist, but I think it's important to know about tradition so that you can evolve the music you are deciding to make.

I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Republican-I'm an American, I'm a human.

I've saved every dime I've made in my life.

I'm very much a traditionalist, but I think it's important to know about tradition so that you can evolve the music you are deciding to make.

I've learned a lot about my voice, and about things I can do with it. Maybe that's why my sound has become a little more pop.

I guess we guess our way through life. How many times do we really know for sure?

I came along at a time when the industry was eating its young.

I grew up in a very modest house. We were poor-we lived on the poverty level. We all got jobs as young kids.

I'm a Scorpio, and who knows if there is any validity to it, but I'm very emotional. I have high highs and low lows.

I recruited my dad to be my bass player and fired him on several occasions. He stayed on as a bus driver.

All I ever wanted to do was write songs and get on a bus and go play them for people.

I wish I had a great relationship with my mother.

As a young girl, there were the obvious messages about what girls could and couldn't achieve. And to compound the limitations I felt being leveled upon me, I realized at the age of nine, that I was gay.

Being born in Kansas City, Missouri and raised in the very rural parts of Kansas led me to believe that everything was simple, everything made sense and that anything was possible.

Human beings are not designed to be alone. None of God's creatures are.

I felt like a sinful person when I dated men and allowed them to feel for me in a way I knew I could never naturally feel for them. That felt wrong and a lie.

I think I'm no different from any artist in music. At least once, you want to see your name up on the top.

I would like to say when I turn the project over to the label that I have been successful. And that's truly the way I feel. But, in addition to the self-pride in 'making' a good album, to be honest, I'd love to have a hit record.

I'd like my writing to be recognized with a Grammy.

If I have a hit, then I hope the people who like the hit song go out and buy my album so they can hear it all.

If I wanted to be a pop singer, I would have done that 20 years ago. I love country music.

In the first decade of my life, I came to know and love God, as I was raised in a Christian home and community.

It's a great feeling to be recognized by your peers. It's an even better feeling to be welcomed and accepted by country radio and its listeners. If desire is any part of this equation, then I'm a contender!

When you use music to worship you are not attempting to entertain.

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away.

When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself.

Whether I'm doing music or I'm walking down the street or I'm in a record store buying a record or I walk into a comic store and I'm buying comics or having a drink with my friends, it's the same me.

When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

There is no music that can't be used politically, but the motives behind the creation of that music can be non-political.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

I was determined to carve out a music of my own. I didn't want to copy anybody.

I have tried to make the music a bit easier for them to understand.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.

My big love was the Beatles. I was more into music.

When we started making electronic music I imagined that the reaction we got from the rock musicians must have been similar to the one the beat groups got from people like my dad.

Uhm, I'm the one wanting the lessons! I don't want to say too much about it because I'd rather have you see the movie, but he's trying to find his music.

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.

Younger players in this music often turn out to be middle aged; it is not a young music.

There's an inherent thing in me where, if things are going too smooth, I'll sabotage the hell out of them, just to make the music more of a sanctuary.

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

We used to listen to all the marvelous operas on records. Music was a very important part of our lives.