The Lounge Lizards were relating with a tradition and it was like I was playing within a musical context. The guitar playing stood out as being different in some way. That was a real education for me.
I love movies that make me cry, because they're tapping into a real emotion in me, and I always think afterwards: how did they do that?
I was always very proud of myself that I could wrest emotion from a doll or a puppet. It never occurred to me that I could find real emotion in a person.
I'm not ambitious. I don't want to get anywhere, I don't want anything more. I sometimes think that for me that is the real freedom, that I don't want anything. I don't want money or prizes. I want people to know that a war is going to be fought.
Real freedom is creative, proactive, and will take me into new territories. I am not free if my freedom is predicated on reacting to my past.
I'm not going to beat this life. It's gonna get me in the end. So accepting that is a real freedom and finding a joy in working that I haven't allowed myself before.
I lived in Nashville for about five years. It was almost like me going to college for my craft. I immersed myself in the songwriting community there. They embraced me, and I made some real friends but also learned so much.
Going after 'the bad guy' has not been a real issue for me.
In bed my real love has always been the sleep that rescued me by allowing me to dream.
For over 20 years, I was in the Army, and it's given me a real love of history.
I didn't want to be the rebel who was bottom of the class, so I worked hard. They wanted me to stay on for A-Levels, but football came calling - that was my real love.
I came back from university thinking I knew all about politics and racism, not knowing my dad had been one of the youngest-serving Labour councillors in the town and had refused to work in South Africa years ago because of the situation there. And he's never mentioned it - you just find out. That's a real man to me. A sleeping lion.
Remember those black-and-white films with Frank Sinatra? Those guys looked like men and they were only 27! Listen to Otis Redding singing 'Try A Little Tenderness'. That was a man who understood what a man has to know in the world. Show me a real man now! Where are they?
A lot of people around me were really staggeringly rich, which I never have been. I walked in between the raindrops of real money, but I've stayed happy.
I ain't want my kids to grow up and call me Thug. I don't want anybody to kind of look at me like that. So I'm gonna just use my real name.
My name, my real name, is Tracy. I always thought I was like a boy named Sue. So I made my friends call me 'Tray.'
For a while, I couldn't join Facebook because of my last name. During the registration process, I was asked for my real name, and when I wrote 'Fake,' it rejected me. Finally, a friend working for Facebook took care of me.
I've felt real pain, and sometimes I channel the exhale coming out of that to write, and those are the songs that give me the most power and the most strength.
I'm even able to have kind of a little bit of a second career in dog rescue. Doesn't pay anything, but it's become a real passion for me.
But people who do not know me are surprised to see me as a real person I guess.
