For the most part, I meet people who are like 'I really like your work. I'm watching your career. I want to see you do well. Keep doing what you do.' I get that so much, and it's so reassuring. I often wish that so many people, who just work normal jobs, could get a pat on the back as much as I do, because it's very complimentary.
I spend a lot of time thinking, if not daydreaming. People think of me as a genre writer, and a genre writer is supposed to be prolific. Since that's how people perceive me, they have to say I'm prolific. But I don't find that either complimentary or accurate.
In fact, people have been very complimentary about my act and very tolerant of my singing ability.
It's always nice when people say nice things or are complimentary.
I search my name on Twitter because I don't want to miss the compliments, and I favorite the nice things people say about me so they know I saw it. People are more positive than they are negative, and I try not to harp on the negative.
Even though now I'm pretty popular in my country and tennis is the No. 1 sport, and I'm very flattered that the people recognise me and come up and give me compliments, I'm more a person who likes to have privacy and peace.
As human beings, we're powerfully swayed by how much we feel we're being respected. People comply with agreements if they feel they've been treated fairly and lash out if they don't.
People comment on the way that I phrase. And in my 20s, I realized, my phrasing is jazz phrasing. I don't comply strictly with musical theater phrasing. Musical theater tends to be very one and three, and jazz is definitely two and four.
People, when they say 'streetwear,' they miss the central component, which is that it's real people; it's clothes that are worn on the street.
The main three components are the blues, improvisation - which is some kind of element that people are trying to make it up - and swing, which means even though they're making up music, they're trying to make it up together. It feels great, like you're having a great conversation with somebody.
When technology is ready for something novel, when the components needed to build something new become affordable, it is going to be done by someone and more likely by several people.
A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
A movement is only composed of people moving. To feel its warmth and motion around us is the end as well as the means.
I am compared to other classical musicians, but most of them perform songs from other people, and most of those composers belong to another era.
As improvisers, we're acting as composers in front of people.
I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet?
I've never loved composing, because I feel like other people do it better.
I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any attention at all. Sometimes it's me, or a composite of me and other people. Sometimes it's not me at all.
You know, I always when people ask me, like, what is my most favorite song, I quote Duke Ellington, when they would ask him, what's his favorite composition? And I say, I haven't written it yet. Because, you know, there are different songs for different occasions.
When I design buildings, I think of the overall composition, much as the parts of a body would fit together. On top of that, I think about how people will approach the building and experience that space.
