Abbey Lincoln Quotes

After 12 intense years of rock music, I was happy to get away from making a record and going out on a tour. When I did it, I wanted to feel inspired. After a while I finally had my fill working on other people's music, and I started coming up with music on my own and said, 'This could be for me.'

I was making more electronic and synth-based music, and when I changed my name, it helped me grow and liberate myself a little bit.

Performing as a musician is a lot different than performing as an actor. As an actor, you can hide behind the character in the play, and there's a director and other actors. When you're a musician, you're right there. It's sort of like being a comedian. You're giving the audience in real time something authentic from yourself. As an actor, my bullshit meter was going off like crazy at my first attempts to find my own rock star.

When you pick a career like acting, it's challenging, but it's a lesson every time you put yourself out there. I wouldn't change it for the world - I love what I learn every single day.

I used to just think about what my fans wanted all the time. But it just started feeling weird to me. I want to just show everyone who I am and stick to my vision. I have to trust myself.

I listen to music, I read scripts, and I know pretty intuitively if I can unlock it in a way. It's actually very liberating when you understand that not everything is for you.

Music is one of the most essential things in life. It is what teaches us.

My greatest achievement is being able to write records that are real snapshots of what's going on in my life. I won't repeat myself for the sake of commerce, or to please other people.

For me, 'Rent' was all about coming out of myself, finding out who I was, learning the power I could have as a performer.

I didn't know if I had the music for it or if I could pull off the larger concert experience. Then I realized if I can just continue to be myself, I'll be all right.

Well, you know, it's been interesting because an album is just a snapshot of where you are at that time. Not all pictures of everybody are just in jeans and a 'T' shirt, or a ball gown. You have many different sides and this is a snapshot of where you are at that time.

Jazz music is America's past and its potential, summed up and sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen to, feel, and understand it. The music can connect us to our earlier selves and to our better selves-to-come. It can remind us of where we fit on the time line of human achievement, an ultimate value of art.

I'm feeling more and more thoughts that aren't songs, just reflections. I'm always been very shy and in some ways a prisoner in one language and I feel that the liberation of creativity has to be in all senses. So I've been deciding to publishing something very simple but very small at the same time, nothing egocentric.

I love acting, but music is so much more rewarding because it's more personal.

I try to do things that keep me interested. And play music that moves me. I like to move around and play in a lot of different ways.

I've always questioned the way dancers, myself included, must do the same role year in and year out. It's important for me to be able to say to myself, 'O.K., I don't want to be a prince anymore. I want to put on a leather jockstrap and pose.'

I think every artist would love to just please themselves musically all day long.

I picked Dad's guitar up when I was 8. It hurt to play, so I put it down and picked it back up when I was 15 and dug in. The guitar helped me come out of my shell and kind of gave me an identity at school.

The only thing I want to be defined by is my music and personality.

I was lucky I went to school in London because the tutors could see what to do. I knew I wanted to do something different. Why would I want to do what other people were already doing, because they would always do it better? I always wanted to work around the body. So throughout my college years, my work was quite free.

Which implies that the real issue in art is the audience's response. Now I claim that when I make things, I don't care about the audience's response, I'm making them for myself. But I'm making them for myself as audience, because I want to wake myself up.

Music I do just for me.

I don't view myself as a musician anymore - I view myself as a human being that functions as a musician when I'm functioning as a musician, but that's not 24 hours a day. That's really opened me up to even more perspectives because now I look at music, not from the standpoint of being a musician, but from the standpoint of being a human being.

Some stuff I don't even put out. I'll just be home, happy, creating something for myself, and then ball it up and throw it in the trash. It's less about trying to prove something or get on somebody's list or make a fan happy or make a hater mad or convert a non-believer. That's not the case for me anymore.

How I set myself apart is by creating the sort of real and honest music, which is who I'm also trying to be.