Neneh Cherry Quotes

From a young age, I had done a lot of theater and musical theater. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my life, but every time I was away from acting, I just felt very incomplete and a little stir crazy.

I do understand that onstage there are times when you think, 'I could not be more alive than I am at this moment. I can't do most things in life. This is what I'm for.'

I feel like I grow wings on stage.

I need to write to be happy.

I never felt comfortable in real life very well. It's always been an awkward kind of thing for me and so when I hit the stage I just sensed freedom. I sensed, 'Here's a place that I can have all the experiences of life and not feel uncomfortable about it.'

I love to sing and perform. It is what I do and love. It completes my life.

I've always felt a spiritual connection with acting. And I felt whole when I was onstage.

I was putting forward too much of myself when I was singing.

Singing and acting suit me. I made a vow to myself to do everything that I can do with this life that I have, and I have to find the time to do this. Sometimes I need to be an actress. Sometimes I don't need to be Jill. However, everyone is always looking for the Jill in everything.

When you were on stage, you could be absolutely open about your emotions and indulge them and express yourself in a way that - in real life - I wasn't doing.

The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness.

I can't imagine life without singing.

I definitely feel more complete than before. There's a void you have when you don't feel you've found the other part of who you are, so I'm in a different place now and that's nice to experience.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I'm always, like, just in it. It's like, 'Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I'm so happy.'

I always was really confident about myself, about my voice, myself as a person, my body, all of those things, but as a songwriter - I just didn't identify as a songwriter at all.

I knew the exuberance of playing before an admiring audience and hearing my secret voice.

I have this sensation of being in flight all the time, but being on stage is like creating a sanctuary in which you can completely lose yourself. The bits of your personality that you keep under wraps in ordinary life, you can let them run free.

I realized after writing songs for years how important it is. Whether it provides a living for me or not, that creative outlet is something I need.

Looking back, I'm surprised I had the nerve to do it, but I'm glad I did. Performing the songs and performing in film was just a part of my personality, just like football and boxing at one point in my life. I was able to lose myself in both of them, and that was a good feeling.

I've got some stories to tell, and acting was a way I could express myself and not feel stupid. I fell in love with that.

Musicians want to be heard. So I'm not hiding. But I do like to leave it there onstage and be myself, in that sense. Because some people carry it with them.

Everything that I hate about myself goes away when I was onstage.

The thing about me and school was that as much as I felt that I didn't belong, as long as I was on a stage or dancing, that's where I excelled the most, felt worthy.

I started to write songs. And I started to like what I was writing. I think it's a new way for me to express things that are closer to myself than when I play a role, because, of course, it's really not me. I'm finding a new way. I don't know what it's going to be. But I know that I will need to give it to people one day.

I enjoy acting when you really hit it right. And I guess I've always had too much fantasy to be only a housewife.