Quotes About Expression

All my writing takes place during the recording of the master tapes. I never do have songs when I start up an album. I actually write them while I record.

I have a lyric journal that I write in a lot. When I'm going to play, I just sit down and have my books with me and my notes and tapes and whatever I need to refer to. I just play and try different things. It's a kind of discipline.

The tapes we were making would jump around with different styles, just quick parts of different songs. Hip-hop to jazz to funk to whatever else. And in a way, 'Check Your Head' ended up being like one of those pause-tapes.

I always just like to improvise, and that goes for my audition tapes as well.

Start as early as you can. Make tapes of your characters.

If I do a piece in my living room, if I practice it - and I have the tapes to prove this - it's not going to be as good as doing the same piece in front of an audience.

It's something we, guys, have all done. Made tapes for girls, trying to impress them, to meet them on a shared plane of aesthetics. Read them someone else's poetry because they do poetry better than you could do it, because you're too awkward to do it.

When we were younger, we sang at the dinner table. We started doing two part harmony, then three part, and then we added back up tapes and instruments.

I've had a couple tapes out and they weren't really tapes, it was just some songs that I had made, and then I would throw them together as a compilation and put a name on it. And then when I would release my next thing, I would just delete it.

I put out tapes, but I always kept saying, 'Why am I putting all this energy into these tapes?' I was like, 'I'd rather make just an album because I have a vision; I know how I want to do my records.' I always felt like an artist as well.

I'm mostly a keep-to-myself kind of guy, but you slowly find yourself getting folded into the musical tapestry.

I am not a performing seal. In your writing, you are tapping into the part that is 'the best' in you. But what you are also filters through in your writing your prejudices, your bitterness. I am not a pretentious person.

I love the notion of a dude sitting there with an untuned guitar tapping his foot and just singing his passion out; that's what got me into music in the first place.

What happens is things come to you - director, script - and if you respond to it, it's because it's tapping into some part of what's inside you, and different roles tap into different parts.

If I'm tapping anything, it's the frustration of people who have something to say at work or home or in some social setting and just can't do it. I do it for them. I don't take prisoners.

Thinking of Internet chat rooms or AIM as a kind - there's such an intimacy and honesty to tapping on your phone, despite how quick people are to damn digital means of communication as emotionless or too abstract.

I wasn't into tapping when it began dying down. Ever since I started, it's been alive for me. I just want to keep on dancing. I want to do it all.

It's probably the first type of music we had, rhythm, whether it's poetry or tapping.

When I was very young, I just loved the idea of tapping on stuff, so I was always making a lot of noise.

My ability to be emotive and cry... I think I'm so fearful of tapping that that I won't know how to turn it off.

The best part of owning a blog is the fact that you are in control. You can write about anything you want to write about. You can decide how your blog looks. You can decide who to target. You can decide how to monetize the blog. You have full control!

Anyone who's speaking up about anything becomes a target.

I like to branch across a lot of different styles and brands in the way I dress; it's just the way my style works. So I love that I can walk into a Target store and think, 'Oh my God, I love these jeans,' and then I'll pair them with something designer.

The novel space is a pure space. I'm nobody once I go into that room. I'm not gay, I'm not bald, I'm not Irish. I'm not anybody. I'm nobody. I'm the guy telling the story, and the only person that matters is the person reading that story, the target. It's to get that person to feel what I'm trying to dramatize.