Quotes on Music

I love the relationship that anyone has with music ... because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. ... It's the best part of us probably.

I used to imagine that making it in music - really making it in music - is if you're an old man going by a schoolyard and you hear children singing your songs, playing jump-rope, or on the swings. That's the ultimate. You're in the culture.

When I was growing up, there weren't that many queer girls of colour making music. So I just wanted to be able to exist, just to be that, without putting too much emphasis on it.

Maybe it's naïve, but I would love to believe that once you grow to love some aspect of a culture-its music, for instance -you can never again think of the people of that culture as less than yourself. I would like to believe that if I am deeply moved by a song originating from some place other than my own homeland, then I have in some way shared an experience with the people of that culture. I have been pleasantly contaminated. I can identify in some small way with it and its people.

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that's pretty much all you can ask.

The song is ended, but the melody lingers on.

Is it not strange, that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies!

Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand.

Sometimes, when you're on the streets, certain music inspires you, and then you have a vision. But, at the end of the day, it's a synthesis of visions, so you have to think, as a director, of a scene, or how to deliver a line, or how do this visually.

I feel like everything we do comes down to how it looks. Even no branding is branding. For example, you had no face or image to put to my music at first. That was branding.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

Never play anything the same way twice.

There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.

Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love it.

Never play a thing the same way twice.

Music is either good or bad, and it's got to be learned. You got to have balance.

Making music has gotten easier; selling it has gotten harder. Making music has been democratized, but the market is in the hands of fascists.

Through music I either tame my demons or unleash them and allow them to be what they are. I don't want the music to be about provocation, I want the music to bring you to a place where you feel at home

I don't know if music can change the world overnight but I know that music can help someone make it through a difficult night.

I love what I do. I was given the most incredible gift that can be given to anyone. I could never imagine a world without music, and I feel grateful that I've been given the ability to share that.