Charles Bradley Quotes

I love the power of the musician who composes and performs. I envy their ability to put a nugget of truth in three minutes of sweat and emotional outpouring, colored entirely from their thoughts.

To give and receive love, you have to be in touch with pain, you have to be capable of provoking it and feeling it.

Even if the songs are at times painful - 'cause some of the songs are not all roses and balloons; some of them dig into deep things that I've been going through - there's a joy that I think people feel from my music and, hopefully, from my performance because I am so in love with doing what I do.

No, I am a crier and if people ever saw me privately they would be shocked at what a bowl of mush I am underneath it all.

I live my life pretty emotionally, for better and for worse. I'm pretty thin-skinned and transparent. I lead with my heart, and I wanted to make a movie that did the same.

All creative people have to have vulnerability because those nuances are what move people. So I'm deeply insecure - but I'm good at hiding it.

The drive toward Life is protective, thoughtful, vulnerable, and invested in immaculate love. It is this last that marks the difference between a wise heart muddy with real life experiences in the trenches and a dry heart that functions on rote concepts alone.

It was really important that 'Dream' kept the balance of strength and total vulnerability - which was my exact headspace when it was being written.

Yeah, 'Mine' was inspired by a person, but it became much deeper than that. I obviously pulled lyrics... from stuff I was actually saying to this person and feeling about this person, but it was for people. I didn't want to make that song to impress that girl; I wanted to make that song to make people feel better.

My plan is just to love harder than I've ever loved before, hide nothing, and embrace that I'm an imperfect human being. Oh, and sadness - sadness is everything.

I don't think that my music without pain is good music - and I wouldn't know, because I haven't made any music without pain.

I realized that even though I had this urge, this longing, to write about other people, in order for it to be emotionally gripping, I needed to be in there somehow.

I want people to know that I'm not just 'Chillin' It.' I'm a real person. There's heartbreak and trials, and I hope I put that in my music.

I believe that Judy Garland's artistry was so fine. I mean, when people say: 'oh, she brought so much of her life to her music', I don't really believe that. I believe that she didn't have to. She just was a moving human being. That was her gift.

There is hurt that cannot be fixed by band aids or poetrybecause no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.

It's easier to write about heartbreak after you've had your heart broken. You have more material to draw from, you can extrapolate from your own experiences and make reasonable assumptions about how your characters would feel and act.

As a writer, as a storyteller, you have to have your emotions close, and the older I've gotten, the less I've worried about not displaying emotions.

I survived this torture which left me paralyzed for years. That's what that night was all about, mutilation, more than violence through sex. I really do feel as though I was psychologically mutilated that night and now I'm trying to put the pieces back together again. Through love, not hatred. And through my music. My strength has been to open again, to life, and my victory is the fact that, despite it all, I kept alive my vulnerability.

I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.

You cannot experience the fullness of your authentic self or life when you live to avoid hurt. You will never know the joy of love or the peaceful satisfaction of being loved if you hide from hurt.

Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but a Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile.

Sorrow is how we learn to love. Your heart isn't breaking. It hurts because it's getting larger. The larger it gets, the more love it holds.

To create an album of love, I really had - I thought it was going to be easy, because I've always written love songs. But I thought if I really want to make a love album that contributes, that actually means something, I've got to go deep.

You can never be truly happy in a life unless you have known a sorrow. All terrible things we have gone through in life have created spaces inside us where happiness can live Not to mention love.