My father was an artist. When life was harder and he couldn't get jobs, he painted houses, but he was artistic. When I went to see his work, it was special. Somewhere along the line, I felt I was special. I didn't know why.
I'm always going to take an experience and a fire beat and marry it all together with adult melodies. I try to paint, just like Frank Ocean paints with his lyrics. I try in similar ways to paint my life into these songs.
When I think of Paisley, I think of everything that has shaped my life.
Paisley offered me and my family a life, way back, and it has continued to do so.
I'm in this really cool place in my career, where the stage I'm on that night, whether it's the Paisley tour, the CMT tour, or a bar with 10 people in it, it is the most important show I've ever played in my life. I go to the ends of my imagination to do something that's unforgettable every night.
I see around 100 shows a month, going from Niketown-size palaces where you feel like yelling, to storefronts in Bushwick. Each has to pay the bills; keep artists happy; and cope with collectors (oy!), curators (ay-yi-yi), critics (woo-hoo!), and occasionally plumbers. That their fiscal life often hangs in the balance only adds to the energy.
I suffered a stroke in 2002 that made everything else in my life that happened to that point pale in comparison.
My family is originally from Palestine, who came here to the United States, you know, from an occupied land to find a better life and find security and safety.
President Abbas, you've dedicated your life to advancing the Palestinian cause. Must this conflict continue for generations, or will we enable our children and our grandchildren to speak in years ahead of how we found a way to end it? That's what we should aim for, and that's what I believe we can achieve.
Palestinian people are in love with life.
We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem.
Life is a painting, and you are the artist. You have on your palette all the colors in the spectrum - the same ones available to Michaelangelo and DaVinci.
You can look at my palm and see the storm coming. Read the book of my life and see I've overcome it.
I've inherited a sense of that loss from my parents because it was so palpable all the time while I was growing up, the sense of what my parents had sacrificed in moving to the United States, and yet at the same time, building a life here and all that that entailed.
So long as you don't feel life's paltry and a miserable business, the rest doesn't matter, happiness or unhappiness.
I love the sense of looking at the sad, paltry, and yet very familiar spectacle that we must make from moment to moment in our lives, and in our frenzy, as something that's as out there as alien life.
Human beings are pampered by the Lord. Their real tests don't come until later in life.
My dogs are spoilt for sure. They are pampered pooches. But I love them so much! I guess all dogs need to be washed, but maybe blueberry facials aren't essential. It's quite fun, though. You want to give your children everything; I don't have children, so I want my dogs to have a good life.
My life is an open pamphlet.
Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper. Everything can have drama if it's done right. Even a pancake.
