Judy Collins Quotes

What we try to do in TSAW, which is Tasha Smith Actors Workshop, is to help the actor get to the core of who they really are and how they really feel. So, we may have them do a dump, where you just basically express everything that you feel that you have not been able to express, whether it's good, bad, or ugly.

I've found that in now having experienced what it's like to make records and just through growing up in general that you should be expressive about what's affecting you instead of trying to sing about a subject just for the sake of other people getting something from it.

I think it's easier to be cynical. I think the temptation, often, among writers is to write about anything other than real, true, deep feelings.

I'm not afraid to use my personal experiences and put them into a song. I think that's when you get the best stuff anyway, when it's real emotion.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

I try as hard as I can to write from a personal place and be genuine.

They lyrical content has grown more introspective and less abstract. I don't know if that's good or bad... Sometimes it feels a little raw to be putting so much of myself out there.

If I write when I'm low, it will be a dark song, but I don't care. I want to be honest with myself at all times.

I remember keeping a lot of journals and diaries and trying to form a complete thought just based off of those immediate, raw feelings. If anything, I was conscious about how I just always wanted to be as honest as possible, no matter how vulnerable it would make me seem.

I'm of the school 'Write what you know.' You can educate yourself, but the best writing usually comes from the heart.

I think I sound like a fella who's always making a plea through his music. Sort of a plea of sincerity.

If you think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.

Everything I write is highly personal, but put in such a way that it's not dropping everything in someone's lap. Although sometimes I think 'The Taxi Ride' embarrasses me, because sometimes I think it's too close.

It's so easy for me to do a boy-bashing pop song, but to sit down and write honestly about something that's really close to me, something I've been through, it's a totally different thing.

I don't project no image. I just act like myself. I write about how I feel, the emotional stage I'm in at the time. So I write from the heart. I never write from my mind. My brain, I mean.

Write what you really care about. Write what you want to say because that is the experience that always rates as genuine on the page.

Playing is just about feeling. Playing isn't necessarily about misery. Playing isn't necessarily about happiness. But it's just about letting yourself feel all those things that you have already on the inside of you, but you're all the time trying to push them aside because they don't make for polite conversation or something.

Those parts of myself that are too ugly or dangerous are precisely the things I feel convicted to share.

Everything I put on stage is real; that's what my life is. My emotions - I wear them on my sleeve. I'm definitely putting my heart out there when I'm on stage.

'Crush' is probably the most honest project I've ever written. It's my voice.

I've never been about just trying to do what works. I've been about trying to authentically express how I feel.

I don't think I could write about something I've never experienced or felt; all my songs are about things I've been through.

I feel like I can't write something that has a real emotion in it if I can't connect to that emotion.

I use myself for each part. Naturally, it's my body, it's my soul, it's my feelings. That's the only way I know how to work. I couldn't pretend.

Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself.