As a politician, you have to deal with someone wanting you to fail every day. I think I prefer being in a situation where generally people are rooting for me, and if they aren't rooting for me, they aren't out there to see my downfall. I respect the people who have the stomach for it.
I tend to treat everyone like equals. That is my downfall, though, because Oprah is Oprah, and Barack is Barack, and you've gotta come in with a certain level of respect and admiration and love while still having that respect. Look at them - these people are, at this point, royalty. I think I get a little too chummy.
I know there are people who are praying for my downfall, but they're going to be like, 'Wow, Xan's actually an artist.'
I'd love for it to go away and for people not to see NXT as a downgrade. I definitely don't think it is.
You know when people say, 'How do you go from Kanye to Wiz Khalifa - that's a downgrade.' But the only question I can ask them is: 'Have you ever dated Kanye? Because I have, and believe me, I did not downgrade at all. Not in any aspect, at all.'
I've had a lot of people tell me, 'Yeah, sure, you're good at slalom, but wait till you get to the real events like downhill or super-G.' I don't like hearing that.
I never understand when people say, 'School days are the best of your life.' So it's all downhill from 16? How depressing.
Some people record onto tape, and then they pay for the tape, and download those onto a hard drive. Initially in a Pro Tools program. Other people go straight into digital, and use no tape at all.
I have no problem with people illegally downloading stuff. I'm not going to drive hard into 'You should buy my stuff,' because really, it's inevitable. If you like a song, you're going to download it for free. I have no problem with that.
People are interested in things not necessarily covered by the mainstream media, so they download things online. The categories are growing because people find out that they're not able to get information about stories that are of interest to them on the evening news.
At the end of the day, people have the right to have opinions. I have the right to have an opinion. And I have the right to say what I want on my music 'cause it's my music. If you don't like it, don't click on it, don't download it.
Then people started using it more and more and it became the most downloaded software on the internet.
I think of it this way: When you hear that people have downloaded your comic, appreciate that thousands are eager to hear what you have to say. The poetry club down the hall may not have the same problem. That's a good problem to have.
We watched the U.S. citizenship immigration services web site in March. They had six million, two hundred thousand hits, and two million people downloaded applications for citizenship. So what we're doing is attempting to help people in that process.
I'm against people downloading music.
I went to college during the Kazaa/Napster era, and we had free Internet, which was a huge deal. People were just downloading all of everything.
We live in a connected world now. Some find that frightening. If people are downloading our music, they're listening to it. The internet is like radio for us.
The desire to share is not a vague, windy sentiment, not when you see the massive rise in live concerts in response to the phenomenon of downloading music... People want to get rid of the headphones and be part of a shared experience.
Russian young people spend countless hours online downloading videos and having a very nice digital entertainment lifestyle, which does not necessarily turn them into the next Che Guevara.
Napster is great so long as they put out tracks on there that have been officially released. I don't really mind people downloading my music; I also see it as a compliment. And if you are a real music lover, you want to have the original CD anyway 'cause then you feel more connected to the artist.
