Tracy Chapman

As a child, I spent a lot of time at the library.

People's real hopes and dreams can be distorted and misdirected and packaged until you're not sure what you really want or what you even really need.

I learn all these things about the record talking about it after it's finished.

Men are able to sustain a career into their 50s and 60s and still present themselves as sex symbols. With women, on the other hand, people say, 'Why doesn't she retire?'

I often write either really early in the morning, or really late at night.

Renounce all those material things that you gained by exploiting other human beings.

I dressed up as a veterinarian for a Halloween costume party. I had the lab coat. I got a couple of stuffed animals for patients and put bandages on them.

I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!

As a child I always had a sense of social conditions and political situations. I think it had to do with the fact that my mother was always discussing things with my sister and me - also because I read a lot.

I love living in California and being able to go to the beach or go to the woods.

Everyone is looking for connections between the songs. I don't usually approach a record as a concept. There's no overriding theme I'm trying to represent. It's all about the individual songs.

I think religion played a huge part in Bush's re-election.

The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I've felt, or something somebody's told me. It all comes together.

Maybe it's naive to say, but it almost seems like, in the past, people tried to sell you something you would actually need, like a hammer or a broom or a toothbrush. But now there's this notion that they can sell you anything. And all they have to do is convince you that you need it.

We all must live our lives always feeling, always thinking the moment has arrived.

I think of the audience the way I would think of another person: You meet someone, then you take it from there; you see what's interesting to both of you.

Love's a recurring theme through my work.

With other people, you're always swapping music. Somebody is always listening to something you've never heard. It's a great way to hear all sorts of new things.

I don't try to project any image at all, other than the person that I am.

After it's finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration.

I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don't have a little list of topics to write about.

I grew up with music in the house. I was told I could sing as soon as I started talking. Everybody in my family sang, always lots of records, blues and jazz and soul, R&B, you know, like Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Coltrane, that kind of thing.

My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it.

If you are living a life that feels right to you, if you're willing to take creative chances or a creative path that feels like it's mostly in keeping with your sensibilities, you know, aesthetic and artistic, then that's what matters.

So much has happened to obscure the dialogue about race and about gender and discrimination in general, especially where those things touch on economics.

I'm not sure about anything as far as religion and spirituality go.

I may be revered or defamed and decried; But I tried to live my life right.

I think it's important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in.

You have to pay attention to the moment and make it the best it can be for you. I've been trying to do that. It's really made a major difference for me. I'm a happier person.

I found myself in the middle of a race riot when I was about 14 years old, and I found someone pointing a gun at me and telling me to run or they'd shoot me.

I had a ukulele when I was much younger. I have no idea what happened to it but I think that was part of it, just being inspired and wanting to try to play an instrument that, to me, sounded beautiful.

I'm still thinking and hoping there's an opportunity for people to have better lives and that significant change can occur.

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

There are some concerns that are universal. Everyone wants to be loved, and everyone wants to feel like they belong somewhere in the world. Everyone wants to do something and feel like they have a sense of purpose. These are just the things that I think about and the things that make their way into my songwriting.

Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control.

Growing up in Cleveland, I learned about singing from my mother, who had once sung professionally and who admired Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin.

A lot of kids spent more time out of school than in, but I always loved school and thought it was my way out of Cleveland, and out of poverty.

We have more media than ever and more technology in our lives. It's supposed to help us communicate, but it has the opposite effect of isolating us.

I picked up the guitar at 11, but even before then, I was writing songs on the organ.

As you might imagine, I'm approached by lots of organizations and lots of people who want me to support their various charitable efforts in some way. And I look at those requests, and I basically try to do what I can.

At this point in my life I'd like to live as if only love mattered.

It's fun playing small venues.

I think many people would say that writers like Stephen King have hypergraphia.

Some things remain fragments, just the lyrics and melodies or a line or two or a verse.

I don't know - I'm not sure about anything as far as religion and spirituality go.

There are good reasons for being in jail - for protesting.

What does the future look like if the heads of society ask our young people to risk their lives for questionable causes? I think it looks rather bleak.

I meet people in my daily life, people who seem to experience some change and some growth on a personal level, and that gives me hope.

Music was never just a hobby for me. I'd pick up a guitar every day to work on whatever I was writing at the time. I would put my ideas in songs the way some people might put them in diaries or journals.

The way popular music is categorized and formatted cuts down on everyone's options. And although people don't talk about it, there are a lot of issues of race determining musical categories of what's rock, R&B, or even folk. It ends up restricting creativity.

When you feel like you've had a good show, you go backstage and you talk to yourself about it, and if you have a bad show you talk to yourself about it.

I'm a hopeful cynic.

I never assumed I would have that commercial success, so it was a total surprise. And honestly, I never assumed that it would ever happen again.