Emeli Sande Quotes

I tried to work with a record label; I tried to work with a booking agency, variety shows. I went to Vegas. I just tried everything I could think of, and nothing took. No one thought there was a place for my style and my music; it was just too different.

You play a couple of shows, and these label guys come - and they leave halfway through a show. Then the phone calls just stop. And your heart is broken.

I learned a long time ago to be honest when I'm talking to other artists. Up-and-coming artists used to come and say something, they would have a demo reel, and I would try to tell them the truth. I don't go up and say something unless I really feel it.

I had left the music industry at the end of 2001, after 10 years, and had spent three years writing every single day - producing two unpublished novels, one abandoned novel, and three unproduced screenplays. The word 'no' and I were on more than nodding terms. The word 'no' and I were talking about going on holiday together.

I don't know how to be a rapper. I just know how to be me.

I thought I'd be wasting my time to go to commercial record companies and make demos for them, because don't forget, I was doing what I was doing and nobody understood what I was doing.

I got all these books about, like, what you need to know to enter the entertainment industry. And I remember I sent my music to record labels, and I took these little DVDs and sent them all over the place. And either no one got back to me or they just kept saying, 'You're too different.'

I wanted to work in the Hindi film industry much more than what I was offered. But if you are a grain of rice in a wheat field, it is not your fault... You are just different.

People are tired of the same ol' garbage. They want people that are willing to speak out, speak up, be open and honest with them.

You know that I can make hits. You know I can do all these rap records. So, I'm going to start opening up and letting you know my struggles.

Making my last record, Warrior, was a pretty miserable process, and it wore my spirit down. I was fighting like hell to keep my whole irreverent essence and everything raw and visceral that I stand for in it, but in the end I was promoting something that wasn't the animal I wanted it to be. I decided to face my problem head-on.

In music the mystical element is definitely there all the time, and one can see it. When it comes to rock and roll, when it comes to any kind of industry, it's not there. It's not there. So it's a battle between the two. Music, Industry.

On a day-to-day basis, you get tired of waiting to be accepted. In show business, someone else has to say that you're good or that you're worth going to see or worth taping a show. There's a lot of pain here. There's a lot of pain inside. I'm a sad, crying-on-the-inside kind of clown.

I've never met a girl who thinks like you." "A lot of people tell me that," she said, digging at a cuticle. "But it's the only way I know how to think. Seriously. I'm just telling you what I believe. It's never crossed my mind that my way of thinking is different from other people's. I'm not trying to be different. But when I speak out honestly, everybody thinks I'm kidding or playacting. When that happens, I feel like everything is such a pain!

A study of animal communities has this advantage: they are merely what they are, for anyone to see who will and can look clearly; they cannot complicate the picture by worded idealisms, by saying one thing and being another; here the struggle is unmasked and the beauty is unmasked.

Going to the office of some stranger and waiting in a line, in a hallway, with five other guys who look just like you, waiting your turn to go in and embarrass yourself, and then waiting around for feedback, which never comes. I really like that. For a young artist, it seems like the perfect thing to be doing, humiliation, over and over and over and over. Which I'm sure can't be the way that some people look at it, but I thought that was so great. The point of it is if you make your own stuff you don't have to deal with other people's bullshit.

People might look at you as super-weird, but if that's your obsession, go for it. I do like a lot of mainstream stuff, and sometimes I also like different stuff. I tend to always root for the underdog.

One of my pet theories is that readers have built-in BS detectors that enable them to recognize insincerity in writers. David [Halberstam] was sincerity to the core. He believed in what he wrote, and that conviction conveyed itself to readers.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike.

My friend, the truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so.

Every song that has been a hit for me has been honest and truthful. I have to believe that same formula will work on this (television) show. It has to be believable and honest.

Write what makes you laugh not what you think will make someone else laugh.

Armenag Saroyan was the failed poet, the failed Presbyterian preacher, the failed American, the failed theological student.

I’ve just had enough of people misrepresenting me. Get to know me and see who I am.

Sometimes I'm just a little bit too honest. There was some things that were going on behind the scenes that I didn't like because it's not what hip-hop is about. Hip-hop is about honesty and it's about being real to the people, and I kinda felt like there's some instances where some artists aren't 100% honest with the people. Their integrity is lacking sometimes. And sometimes it comes out.