Inspirational Experience Quotes

Seeing people catch a feeling in their spirit and sprint the aisles of the church while my cousins played driving, uplifting gospel stuck with me. I let that same feeling wash over me when I experience and perform music.

Every new experience will trigger melodies in my head.

I first heard Mahler's second symphony aged 11 in Liverpool, and it inspired me to become a conductor.

When I was nine, I was passing by a drum class and saw them playing and I was moved. That's why I started making music.

I've been building a fiction in part around the Marfa poem since my brief residency there, which has kept it from receding into the past.

You grow up watching certain films or admiring certain filmmakers, and to write a love letter to one and have them validate it, it's extraordinary.

Kanye West is a brilliant poet and artist. He and I work in a very similar way. We feel the vibration, the power of something, and it inspires us to create, whether it is music or design. It is the same process. Working with Kanye is a joy and great privilege. In 2012, we did collaboration together.

Working with Robin Williams, and Bob Hopkins, and Dustin Hoffman and you're talking about 'gods,' really, in our industry. You look at legends everyday. It was so impactful to me as a young artist.

When I was about 16 or 17, I had a teacher who took a group of us to the National Theater in Washington, D.C., and I saw Ian McKellen do his one-man show - I think it was called Acting Shakespeare - and it completely bombed me; it put the zap on my brain in a big way.

As a young boy growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I was inspired by the nascent space age.

I love this race from the very depths of my heart. It gives me motivation and it transcendsme like nothing else in the world.

Seeing what kinds of songs work in other cities and other parts of the world was pretty eye-opening. I know it changed how I approached the second record big-time.

It sounds corny, but it's absolutely true: A song chooses me. I don't go looking for a certain kind of lyric. It kind of develops its own little arc and I'll just see what happens.

Once you have looked at the land from atop the Kahlenberg, you will understand what I write and who I am.

Seeing a young band, seeing that hunger and the raw spontaneity, is good for me. It keeps me young, so to speak.

You never know what show is going to change your life.

I couldn't recommend more that people put themselves in a situation where they can see a lot of work that they admire, and for free.

Getting to play the part of Selena was life-changing for me, i got to immerse myself in her life, got to know her family, her home, her culture ... every part of her story. It was a special time in my life both professionally and personally. Playing her not only opened doors for me in the film world, but it inspired me to start my own music career. In a lot of ways, I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't had that experience.

You didn't hear the angels singing. It was brought down to Mother Earth, which is where it should be. And that led me to a lot of other reading.

I've always seen the songs as having a consciousness. Since I was two-and-a-half they would come to me from nowhere. I never thought that I was conjuring them by myself, and I was always grateful they would come and visit... They've always been very much alive. They don't have a physical body like we do but there seems to be an awareness.