I love the song 'I Hope You Dance' by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.
I write some country music. There's a song called 'I Hope You Dance.' Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.
It's hard for anyone intelligent to be nonviolent. Everything in the universe does something when you start playing with his life, except the American Negro. He lays down and says, 'Beat me, daddy.'
I grew up in a family that was multifaceted, sexually oriented, and pretty much open to everything. And because I was working, my friends were all adults. I had a tough time going to different schools because people knew me from films and I was the fat child who got beaten up every day.
I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.
Basically, I was pretty ostracized in my hometown. Me and a few other guys were the town freaks- and there were many occasions when we were dodging getting beaten up ourselves.
I had a grandmother who was really strong, who doted on me, who wanted to make sure that I didn't go off the beaten path, although I did.
I enjoy it; my experiences abroad have taught me the importance of an open mind and have given me a willingness to wander off the beaten path - not only to keep life interesting, but also to understand in a meaningful way that things do not look the same from every vantage point.
I guess we all have that 'Dig Me' space, where we have some of our things displayed. Mine's a little bit more off the beaten path. You're not going to see it as soon as you walk into my house, but it does exist.
To really be on stage and not know what you're going to say, and to be able to say something that makes people laugh, or do something that's sort of abstract or off the beaten path and have people connect to it by just putting your ideas together, that really makes me happy.
Jazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul - the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.
When a man keeps beating me to the draw mentally, he begins to get glamorous.
I don't feel like I'm in competitive with anybody. If I'm worried about beating somebody else, I'm not going to be the best version of me. It shouldn't be a competition because somebody else winning is not going to make me lose.
The idea of a spiritual heart transplant is a vivid image to me; once you have the heart of somebody else inside you, then that heart is there. Jesus' heart is inside me, and my heart is gone. So if God were to place a stethoscope against my chest, he would hear the heart of Jesus Christ beating.
People say I'm the Beatle who changed the most, but to me, that's what life's about.
People only look at me as a Beatle, but my friends look at me as a whole person. That's how life works, but it's not bugging me anymore.
Teaching is just something that has come naturally to me. I didn't set out to be a teacher. I wanted to be a Beatle! But there were only four of them, so the job openings were really limited.
I had girlfriends who really irritated me by their devotion to the Beatles. I didn't begrudge them their interest, and there were songs like 'Hey Jude' that I could appreciate. But they didn't seem to be essential to the kind of nourishment that I craved.
My dad played guitar, and he taught me enough to play some Beatles' songs. But primarily, I was a bookworm. I loved reading and still do. My whole family does. It was part of the family culture. Accomplished literacy was a value.
I can't leave home without certain movies. 'The Godfather' is a big one for me. And I've gotta have my beats so I can write new music.
