India Arie Quotes

We've mastered the art of making pretty music that makes you want to die.

I want to put my vibe and my feel of music into an album and have people from different places around the world feel that and hear that.

With music, I get to a much darker place. Where I'm able to go with 'Portlandia' has a wider range, but also a brighter range.

Shostakovich's final pieces, his quartets, are scratching the surface of another world.

We've never been satisfied with just making 'me' music. What we're doing is trying to go to a place of some reverence.

One reason I think I am able to work with such dark material is the fact I was never really discouraged from making this kind of work.

I had no precise plan when I started 'Electronica,' but I think it has been a very positive journey for me.

I like the contrast in making something that sounds sunny but also has an element of melancholy to it.

To me, music is more like a spiritual seeking that takes one to unknown levels.

We've made a lot of party music; we're definitely not Thom Yorke. But there's also depth to our records; we get emotional.

I've written so many songs that are hopeful - songs that are, like, about an old man that gives all his possessions away because he wants to help people. I wrote 'Pumped Up Kicks' just to tell a different type of story.

Sadness takes up the pen more readily than joy.

When I write, I tend toward melancholy, and the few times that I've tried pure joy in music, it doesn't really work that well. The joy can be through catharsis. I think that's what I do well, and observation.

We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush, We are but critics, or but half create.

I find that I end up liking songs if I really have an idea of something I wat to write about-some problem in my life or something I want to work through; if I don't have something like that at the root of the song, then I think I end up not caring about it as much. I gravitate towards some kind of concept or idea or situation that I want to write about. Very often I have to write, rewrite and come at it from an opposite angle...and I end up writing the opposite song that I thought I was going to write.

This labour of the artist to discover a means of apprehending beneath matter and experience, beneath words, something different from their appearance, is of an exactly contrary nature to the operation in which pride, passion, intelligence and habit are constantly engaged within us when we spend our lives without self-communion, accumulating as though to hide our true impressions, the terminology for practical ends which we falsely call life.

I have defined poetry as a 'passionate pursuit of the Real.

I'd say that the middle stanza is closer: that's the place where the poem ranges unexpectedly into a different realm.

There's lots of sides. The CD doesn't really create a mood. It creates more of a journey. It starts out with a simple bluegrass tune, sort of melancholy and sad, like "Lovin' and Lyin'," then it's sexy and there's some funny songs in there where I'm talking, like "Designated Drunk." There's a humor side, a sexy side, but there's also a pretty sad side, the country side. It's the backwards side of me!

Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order.

You have to get beyond your own precious inner experiences. The actor cannot afford to look only to his own life for all his material nor pull strictly from his own experience to find his acting choices and feelings. The ideas of the great playwrights are almost always larger than the experiences of even the best actors.

Great drama is great questions or it is nothing but technique. I could not imagine a theater worth my time that did not want to change the world.

Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.

Maybe I'll have something out by Christmas, maybe not. I don't know, I'm really trying to take my time and do what feels right. (about the next step in her music career)

Sadness is the matrix from which wit and irony spring; sadness is uncomfortable and creative, which is why consumer society cannot tolerate it.