My father was always playing this ethnic blues stuff around the house, and both my parents played. Then one day my father brought home Big Bill Broonzy, and there he was sitting in our living room playing, and blues was in my heart from the time I was 12 years old.
One of the things I learned in the military is sometimes you don't know what mistakes you make for a long time. But as you go through a campaign, there's lots of decision points you make, and you don't know whether those are gonna be the right decision points or not.
Sunday morning church service is not an enormous priority; spending time with other believers is.
To get a movie star, you have to give them two hours of screen time.
There was a moment in time where I was really focused on the Navy and I followed through with it - I passed the test. I was happy with myself because I was accomplishing something and I was really working towards a goal. That was the first true thing I invested my energy in.
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 would be a huge hypocrite if I didn't tell you that at one time in my life I thought the way that you made music was you got on a major label and you got famous.
I don't know when the last time I had fried chicken was. Must've been years. As soon as I think about eating it, I think about the stomach ache I'd get.
Well, it is certainly not by choice at this time you don't see or hear about me. This business is very unpredictable. A lot of it is luck and being in the right place at the right time.
I woke up on the plane this morning and was turning on my phone and I had to put my pin number in. That's when I realized that since the age of 10 I've been using 2012 as my pin number. But now that I've won gold in the 2012 Olympics, I've achieved that goal and, for the first time in 14 years, I'll have to change my pin.
My fans don't feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I'm going through now, they'll hear about it on a record someday. They'll hear the real story. There's a little bit of lag time. It's not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it's much more accurate.
Up until the time I was 14 years old, I was sure that I was going to be a big-league baseball player. But that dream came to a rude awakening when I got cut from my high school baseball team.
When I did 'Amadeus,' I hadn't done a play for five years. And I was so happy doing it and felt so foolish that I hadn't done a play for such a long time that I wanted to go back and really kind of reach out for a classical career.
There was an age, however, when the transition from savagery to civilization, with all its impressive outward manifestations in art and architecture, took place for the first time.
I chose a time in the century which had the greatest moments for novels - the late '30s and World War II.
My talent before singing is being able to interpret and understand my emotions. I've felt pain and felt it intensely, so every time I sing, I revisit it.
I really wanted to find a piano for the farm house. There were so many free pianos on Craigslist, I thought, 'Let's get as many free pianos as we can and stick them all in the barn.' I got eight in a short period of time, only six of which were tunable, but it's still quite funny.
I talk all the time about how much I read growing up and how much I love Stephen King and how he impacted my work from a genre perspective, but Pat Conroy wrote some of the most magnificent stories about characters who had to deal with dysfunctional families and try to find a place of honor in their own world and the pain of loss.
I look at the Samurai because they were the artists of their time. What I think struck me when I read Bushido is compassion. 'If there's no one there to help, go out and find someone to help.' That hit me, because I try to lead my life like that.
A lot of the time I get obsessed by little nerdy things in my corner that no one else is interested in. I have that nerd factor in my character.
It just seemed the timing of it was a little bit of pandering to the public at a time of an election.
Where wages command labor, as in the non-slaveholding States, there necessarily takes place between labor and capital a conflict, which leads, in process of time, to disorder, anarchy, and revolution if not counteracted by some appropriate and strong constitutional provision. Such is not the case in the slaveholding States.
All art is exorcism. I paint dreams and visions too; the dreams and visions of my time. Painting is the effort to produce order; order in yourself. There is much chaos in me, much chaos in our time.
It's cool to express myself, but I've had to learn that doing interviews isn't completely therapy - spilling everything about yourself isn't healthy all the time. But I've been through things that have made me a stronger person, and if I can help some people, I will.
I'd always loved poetry and I'd always loved writing music and composing music, but I hadn't thought of putting the two together until around that time.
So I am one of those bass players who can do something and musically, it was back then and now it is even more, if you noticed on the new album, I am not playing all the time anymore.
Each time I seem to go through one of life's huge things, I want to play music.
At the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values, and your vision, and the life experiences that make you who you are.
Social mores change all the time. In the mid-1970s, it would've been astonishing, say, to see two men holding hands in the streets. And the attitude to having a fling with a girl, or whatever, was quite different then.
First time I saw Elvis was at the Lubbock County fairgrounds in Lubbock, Texas. He was on the back end of a truck. There was about 1500 screaming kids.
There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.
I have a hard time waiting for things to happen.
Most of my time, energy and other resources I use to nurture my projects.
I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America's really large shadow and that's not all that bad.
When I get really hammered I take my clothes off. That's a sure sign. It's been a long time since the last time I did that. Probably a year.
The only time I really eat out is when I'm on the road. Then, I make the same choices that I would make at home - salmon and lots of oily fish and veggies.
