Quotes About Expression

I was working with another major label after Warner Bros, and they were telling me who to hire as musicians, what kind of music to play, what producer to use. I mean, what's the point of putting me on the record?

Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice.

I do not know of a Chinese blogger who has gone to jail, but I know several who have had their blogs shut down. I also know some Chinese bloggers who have received threatening phone calls from police warning them to 'be careful.' In some cases, they stopped blogging for a while.

Are artists the canaries in the mine, warning of the coming explosion before anyone else? It's hard to look at the world before 1914 and not wonder if they somehow felt a catastrophe was bearing down on them and their societies.

And it really is a good feeling to get up there and make that sound. I'm not stuck in a time warp, because I can use as many of the old songs as I want to, just the favorites.

I don't necessarily make much art myself, but after I wrote 'Warped Passages,' I was fortunate to get involved a little in the art world. I got invited to write a libretto for what we called a projective opera, and I also got invited to curate an art exhibit.

The creative process taps into our deepest subconscious, and we are each of us sex-crazed - products of a shame-based Judeo-Christian culture that has irrevocably warped us all to varying degrees.

Always from day one, we were the band on Warped Tour with a fog machine, and our backdrop had to be up - everyone thought we were the biggest idiots for that, total posers. But for us, we wanted to be over the top.

I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka.

I think Warped Tour's bringing something special to me.

Presently, I really admire Rebecca Warren, the artist. She continues to keep creating wonderful sculpture. And I met her, and she is really cool.

I'm always trying to emulate guitar. Especially when I'm playing the trombone, that's what I think about. Like, I listen to guitar players every day: Warren Haynes, Lenny Kravitz, Prince, different people. And I'm always trying to find out a way how I can get my trombone to sound like that.

When I discovered Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, I could explore the records that inspired me on a different level and that led me to Joni Mitchell, who is maybe my favorite of all time, and Warren Zevon. Those artists that wrote the lyrics that you try for.

I'm not a social justice warrior - that was never my goal, to be a political figurehead.

All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They've been used to start revolutions and to stop wars.

What I've tried to do is bring the madness out in the open. Keep it under wraps, and it erupts into wars and violence.

Culture is important. Wars are fought over culture. It's not just about folks showing up and being hoity-toity. Culture is about definition.

It's warts and all in my songs, and I think that's why people can relate to them.

My songs grow on people - like warts.

I've done a lot of movies that don't have any music in them, and I've always sort of had a kind of wary attitude about music because it can be so manipulative, and also because with pop music, I feel like everybody kind of has their own relationship to songs.

Playwrights are naturally wary and protective - God, who's more protective than a playwright? You read a play, the playwright wants to hear from you immediately.

Governments have always been wary of the arts because they're wayward and ambiguous and because they deal with feelings rather than facts.

Why do people want to know exactly who I am? Am I a poet? Am I this or that? I've always made people wary. First they called me a rock poet. Then I was a poet that dabbled in rock. Then I was a rock person who dabbled in art.

Actors in the film industry are usually wary of expressing their opinions on the issues of the day, politics especially.