Teju Cole Quotes

Cinema is universal, beyond flags and borders and passports.

So whenever I hear The Beatles I always feel I've got a lot in common with everybody else.

Objects let you tell a narrative that encompasses everybody. Texts don't.

People like to say how much they like stuff, but with 'The Sunset Tree,' people shared stories about what it meant for them. And that stuff's so humbling and amazing.

I love stories about people that, whatever situation they're in, you can relate to them in a way.

You want people - I want people to relate to me as a character. I want them to go, 'That could have been me,' or, 'I know someone like that.'

As a songwriter, I do kind of look at 'Santa Monica' as a thing outside of itself, because it isn't just my song. This is a song a lot of people tell me is a part of their high school or college years. That means a lot to me.

It's hard to say what an album is about - because each one is usually about a lot of things to me, but then I hope it also can mean a lot of different things to someone else. That's the beautiful thing about music.

I hope that my lyrics have a way that they're so specific they become universal, and they go, 'Oh I've been there, I know what that's like.'

What I like about music is that you make a song, you've got your ideas in it, and people make that song part of their life - they hang out with their friends to it, they get in arguments to it, they get married to it, they get divorced to it. It's in their world, and it takes on its own life.

Things that feel super personal actually feel really universal. It's sort of the more you really identify something specific within yourself, the more people connect to it because ultimately we are all connected in some way.

I'm glad that the lyrics reach people and make them understand that we're all the same, really.

A lot of people have told me, you know, that what I've written about, they identify with strongly.

At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about 'petty personal problems' was to recognize that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one's own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions—and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas—can't be yours alone. [...] Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares.

I want to express the feelings that everyone has felt at least once in music so i think people will feel/understand my song.

Music links us humans, heart to heart...Across time and space, and life and death.

People always loved best what they identified most with.

My favorite thing is watching people watch The Hollars movie and then come up to me and say whether they went through an experience like that or they went through an experience nothing like that, but it still was their mom or "that was my brother" or whatever it was - that's great.

We share plates [with Jordan Peele], and we also very often will sit in the corner and kind of speak in our own language.

I really focus on what my fans will take from it, people living their day-to-day lives. At the end of the day, the music isn't for me; it's for people who are going through their struggles and want to relate to someone who feels the same way they do. I've got to go all-in, expressing myself, right there in the moment.

I saw an interview with Keith Richards. He said, 'How else could a kid in Dartford suddenly connect with and understand what Muddy Waters is singing?' There's a cultural difference, but there's just something in that music that subconsciously or internally you just understand; it just makes sense.

The word love carries the same vibration in any language. You probably know this guy, you probably had dinner with him yesterday. The Japanese water crystal guy?

When you're really bummed out, the last thing you want to hear is up-tempo and positive. And it lets you know that you're not alone, that somebody has hurt before. It works the same way with chick songs as it does with political songs. When you hear somebody singing about these things, you know that you're not alone, that somebody else is suspicious of what's going on around us in the world. So you don't feel like you're crazy, and you feel like you might be able to make a difference.

The number one thing I want my videos to be is relatable.

I'd like to do something that hits close to home.