Kali Uchis Quotes

I think my favorite artists are honest artists, and as a songwriter, that's what you have to do. You have to be willing to put yourself out there in a really vulnerable way.

You can't be the vulnerable, transparent, raw person required to be an artist, and then cover that stuff up and meet the world with some kind of armor on. It just doesn't go.

For me, when I'm writing something really personal, I don't feel good about it. It's weird that people can connect to it and like something that came from a really crap place. You have to be quite brave to write about something that you honestly feel and think.

I've always seen it as the role of an artist to drag his inside out, give the audience all you've got. Writers, actors, singers, all good artists do the same. It isn't supposed to be easy.

Most of the time, when you are in the studio, you are revealing yourself; you're a bit naked. You can express your weaknesses, your awkward way of approaching sound. Sharing these intimate moments is like inviting somebody into your private room.

As a work gets more autobiographical, more intimate, more confessional, more embarrassing, it breaks into fragments.

I'm never nervous about being vulnerable with my songwriting because my favorite artists are ones that are vulnerable. I want people to feel like they know me.

Writing is very different to having your photo taken. You are exposing yourself more, not physically but emotionally.

I think most of my songs are based on an emotion and in every song I write, there's at least a partial truth.

When I write, what I long for is not more realism or fiction but more courage. That's what I always find myself short on and what I have to struggle to achieve in order that the work might live.

My lyrics are my diary - you're hearing every detail of my life.

Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.

Sometimes, particularly in summers in New York, I have tried to write in shorts or with no shirt on and found myself unable to do so, the reason being, I take it, that writing, even of the most impersonal sort, is for me a divestment, a striptease, even, so that if I start off undressed, I have nowhere to go.

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.

To be vulnerable, to be raw, to virtually expose your guts, I like doing that.

Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don't get me.

If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.

You know, I've sung a lot of emotional songs in my life, but when you're writing it yourself, it's very difficult to decide what to reveal.

Some people are attracted to vulnerability. From my very first album, I've been vulnerable. I've always given parts of me, parts of my life - good, bad, ugly. I've never put up this image as a super-thug. Also, some people just like the music.

I can't become another person, no matter how much makeup I wear. Something of your own past, your experiences and personality always comes out in the role, and that makes acting very risky. You're exposed. You always wonder if you can pull it off.

I've got a long list of things I consider to be selling out. But amongst that list, one of them is when you make art without putting your guard down.

Coming off 'Reflection,' what we really wanted to do was be more vulnerable.

Sometimes I think it's the responsibility of the artist to reveal a little more of themselves.

To be a great creator, you have to be vulnerable. You're creating characters that have a little bit of yourself in them... And you want to know it's a safe environment for that.

The songs that you start to write that you are a little scared of can be the ones that you have to tell.