I actually had someone say to me, 'Lynn, you're going to have very good days, and you're going to have very bad days. But It's rare that things are as good as they look, and it's rare that things are as bad as they seem.' So having perspective, and challenging perspective, is important to making good decisions.
Holidays are reflection time and I always take 'Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting', by Lynn Grabhorn.
Punk was key to the early part of me playing guitar. I was really into melodic punk-rock. I related to punk more than Lynyrd Skynyrd or Yes or Van Halen.
For me, whenever I choose a song to sing, it's about the lyric first.
When I was growing up, Dr. Seuss was really my favorite. There was something about the lyrical nature and the simplicity of his work that really hit me.
Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about.
Honestly, when I do a lot of records where it's super lyrical, all that it is to prove and to show people, like, I can really rap. I can switch flows - I can go with the best of them - so first of all, I want you to respect me as a rapper.
I remember writing lyrics for 'Take Me to Church' for a long time before I even had a song in mind for. It's not that I was trying to write that song for a year, but sometimes you just kind of collect lyrical and musical ideas and don't actually complete the song until you feel like they work together and have a home.
People know, lyrically, I go in, and you should never take me lightly on any record.
In the beginning of Audioslave, I was very honest. I said, 'We make great albums and write great albums - but don't be under the impression I'm going to be a lyricist that writes anything other than what strikes me as inspiring in the moment.' The lyrics weren't going to be focused politically.
It was very difficult for me to be the only lyricist in the band.
As a writer, as a lyricist, you're just trying to make sure that you're not repeating yourself. And that's a danger for a lot of people. So for me, I just try to keep taking corners and trying to find new paths.
One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what's really happening to me, even if it's a tough pill to swallow for people around me... I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.
Of course Jack Ma was the guy who impressed me.
Quite a few musicians came to our house. And my ma took me to hear many more, hoping to encourage in me a love of music. But she wouldn't consent to my having music lessons, for she feared I might end up as she had done - unable to play except from paper.
I have an insatiable palate. I'll try anything once, with an open mind. However, there is a special place in my heart for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Don't get me wrong, I've sampled specialty Mac & Cheese all over the world, but nothing competes with the stuff I grew up on.
With 'Lady Macbeth,' I had two other things offered to me, and they would have also been very fun, but you just have to figure that out. And then you do it.
I was raised on John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series. Something about this genre - hard-boiled-private-eye-with-heart-of-gold - never failed to take me away from whatever difficulties haunted my daily world to a wonderful land where I was no more than an enthralled spectator.
I'm sure that people must say about me, on the screen, 'Good gracious, is Jeanette MacDonald going to take off her clothes - again?
My literary heroes all wrote about L.A.: Joseph Wambaugh, Ross Macdonald, and Raymond Chandler were the three writers that made me want to be a writer.
