Maybe you're going to a concert thinking you're not going to hear anything but music. But you may walk away from there with an answer to a problem that you're carrying around with you that you didn't think you were going to hear about.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if there were a way to make movies without actors, George Lucas would do it.
I've never understood musicians who don't enjoy doing promotional interviews. I just can't believe it. I always think, 'Your life must have been so brilliant before you were in a band.'
The way you were born is the way you were born. Nothing can change it. I've got a deep voice. I know. I might look tough, but what are you going to do? Do you think you can change it? No.
If all difficulties were known at the outset of a long journey, most of us would never start out at all.
Oh, I live in London. So, whether I like it or not, I am a member of the metropolitan elite. If I were anywhere else in the country, I'd hate me.
We were second-generation immigrants, and it was luxury enough to go to college. The luxury of the arts was still a generation away.
Shields were generally made of wood, covered with leather, or some similar substance. To secure them, in some sort, from being cut through by the sword, they were surrounded with a hoop of metal.
I wanted to write some lyrics that had some meaning to them, lyrics that were meaningful to me and hopefully people can take something from that.
Like, Mission Of Burma to me always sounded almost like they were part of the British Arty New Wave. I kind of like that. I like not being able to tell the difference.
In other words, musicians know that going back to the Spoonful, what we were doing was not copying.
If I were trying to avoid embarrassment, I wouldn't have stumbled my way through 'Dancing with the Stars.'
Very early in life, it seemed to me that there was a relationship between the problems of the Negro people in America and the Jewish people in Russia, and that the Jewish people's problems were worse than ours.
Nike used to be known as Blue Ribbon Sports. What's now Sara Lee used to be Consolidated Foods. And Exxon was once Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. These were name changes that worked. But for all the ones that do, there are 10 or 20 that don't.
I began in an era where four-letter words were not allowed.
A weird thing about Gossip that I've always said: 'If I weren't in this band, I would never listen to it.' But I would go see it. It's a band you would go see that you don't necessarily listen to. We've always wanted to do a live album because personally, I think we're a way better band live than on record.
Most churches are run by preachers who went to seminaries, who decided to be preachers when they were 18, 19, 20 years old. These preachers never met a payroll. They don't know how the world works.
I think we were all frustrated with our daily routine.
Our father died when we were very young, so our mother raised six kids. We saw the world filtered through her eyes, being a minority woman raising six kids.
We attacked selected military targets of the P.L.O. Around, civilians were hurt, I don't want to deny it. Very regrettable, very regrettable. We regret it deeply.
Because we were orbiting the earth faster than earth spins on its axis, we went around the earth 16 times a day, an earth day, which meant 16 periods of lightness and 16 periods of darkness in 24 hours. Every so often you'd look towards the earth, and often you could see lightness and darkness together, and dawn and sunset were spectacular.
The groves were God's first temples.
Eventually I did that, but it took a lot of twists and turns, and there were a year or two there where I was living with no money at all - no home, no car, no nothing. I was living in somebody's garage in Los Angeles at that point - for a year.
But we didn't have the financial structure, like the right attorneys, the right managers, the right accountants, and we were going against the grain of what black entertainers is supposed to do.
Our investigations were very fruitful. They led to the discovery of a new cell part, the lysosome, which received its name in 1955, and later of yet another organelle, the peroxisome.
I wish my grandmother and grandfather were still alive, because they were able to keep me grounded.
I think that Benjamin Franklin felt very strongly in foreign policy in this world, that you needed to at least show some humility, especially when you were strong.
My parents were divorced and I would spend weekends with my father.
When I started, black people were either victims or they were the perpetrators; they were the boogie men who jumped out of the bushes and did terrible things to you.
I was in California the first time I heard Michael Jackson wanted to record with me. I was, like, 'Nah, no way, he's too big, it can't be true.' Then I got a call from Michael's people at my hotel telling me he was interested. But I still wasn't believing it - I thought they were setting me up for a TV practical jokes show.
If there was ever any truth to the trickle-down theory, the only evidence of it I've ever seen was in that period of 1960 to 1965. All of sudden they were handing out major label recording contracts like they were coming in Cracker Jack boxes.
I was, without a sliver of a doubt, a no-good, lazy slacker of a child, and after I discovered literature, I was totally and utterly a no-good, lazy slacker of a child who read books. A lot of books, good and bad, but my favourite - the books I read and reread in my teens - were by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.
After the success of 'August,' there were people saying I should change my life. And maybe I should have bought a yacht and traveled the world instead of returning to Steppenwolf to act in and write plays. But I'm from the Midwest, and that's what we do: We go back to work.
The poets whom I knew then were all men and all seemed dauntingly sure of themselves - although I am sure that really they were as uncertain as I was.
When I was a boy, my parents were writers and they owned a bookstore, 'The Complete Traveler in New York,' so writing and books have held special places in my heart all my life.
I did pretty well at the Sydney Olympics, but those were my first Games.
