Boots Riley Quotes

'Hatful of Hollow' and 'The Smiths' were lent to me, and they made me want to create music that might make another person feel like they made me feel - to have an effect on someone.

The main objective in any song, the songs that I write, has always been that it reflect the way I feel, that it touch me when I'm finished with it, that it moves me, that it can take me along with it and involve me in what its saying.

Music is still above all else the thing that does it for me.

Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life.

I like the music that I sing, cos I, like, feel it more.

If you make something from your heart, of course you want it to connect with the people.

Hopefully when you listen to a song, you can say, 'That's me,' or 'That's someone I know' - you relate to it in a way that's cathartic.

All my collections are based on something I like or something I'm dealing with. They are always deeply personal.

Music can feel empowering, or it can give a natural emotional voice to something people can't express. This is why it's beautiful.

All my songs mean something to me.

I think my music is a way of communicating very directly with people and with people's emotions. I try to make music that doesn't need layers of complexity or obfuscation to speak to people.

Music is always with me and I don't need a special space for it.

The artists that I love- whether painters or filmmakers- it's because something resonates in me because I've felt it.

Music comes from the soul. It's a way to express yourself, so we always, always need to save the music.

Yeah, I've always sung, and I always try to find a way for music to be in my life.

It's interesting how songs can evolve. Sometimes I'll write a song that feels relevant in the moment, but four years later, I don't want to sing it anymore. Then something will happen in my life, and the song becomes relevant again.

Everything was a song. Every conversation, every personal hurt, every observance of people in stress, happiness and love... if you could feel it, I could feel it. And I could write a song about it.

For me, how I feel about what I wrote down turns into a song.

We like movies and books that give us this emotionally moving experience, where you feel like a slightly different person, and you see the world a little different after you finish. It lets you see your own life in a different way, and it actually makes you feel really good.

People will come up to me at shows and tell me that a song touched them in a completely different way than I wrote it. That's fun. Fans translating it in their own way.

If I'm feeling outraged, grief, disbelief, frustration, sympathy, that gets channeled through me and into my pictures and hopefully transmitted to the viewer.

My songs are a direct route into my brain and my heart.

I just think when you read something that's magnetic that pulls you into it or resonates with you, whatever that may be, that's always a positive thing. And you never know what that's going to be.

If you're feeling emotional when you're creating something, it'll sound that way.

I was touched by the magic of music. My way to communicate was through my guitar and music.