Quotes About Expression

To own your song is very special. Now that I have a platform and so many people watching me, I have an upper hand.

When I was at Upright Citizens Brigade, I would pretend to be a sad, drunk rapper.

When I was first starting out, you'd have to bang an old upright piano and stick a mike in it and it would always feed back and you could never turn it up loud enough to be heard and I would beat my hands black and blue and bloody.

There was no Groundlings or Upright Citizens Brigade where I was from. Looking back on it, I was trying to do sketch comedy in my stand-up, which is still kind of what I am doing now. To go full-circle here, it's kind of like one-man sketch.

When I am back home, I have an upright piano and I play constantly.

I'd started doing fanzines from the age of nine. I'd been doing as many copies as you can get carbon paper into an upright typewriter, and I'd try to sell them at school.

Poetry is a lousy form of activism; it doesn't really change much. And maybe we can point to one or two historical times when a poem has started a revolution or a rebellion or an uprising, but it doesn't happen that often, and if you put the number of poems next to the number of political acts, it would be pretty slim.

I have my ups and my downs like anyone. All I can do is be me.

In such a globally connected world, musicians now have the unique opportunity to express all of the cultural 'mash ups' we are experiencing these days. Akin to the blend of cultures that occurred in early 20th-century New Orleans that led to the birth of jazz, I believe that the world has reached a similar cultural turning point.

I hadn't done a photo cover in a while, and I decided to do a take on the 'Pin Ups' cover, but do it in skull face and have the girl in skull face. People seem to dig it.

I started writing 'Normal People' not knowing that anyone would read it, not knowing that anyone would read the first book, so I didn't really have any hang ups about, 'Oh, I can't do this again. I've done this already.' It was just a project I was working on for my own amusement.

It would be interesting to get into two different get ups and play diverse characters.

In films, the camera catches each nuance of expression in close ups. On the stage, it is less subtle, you have to act with your whole body.

It's my job to have ups and downs because it makes good music.

I think either you're creative or you're not. In general, I don't think you need to be in pain to actually be creative unless you're writing love songs. Then you might need to have some ups and downs within your emotions to start to capture that.

Filmmaking is not a balancing act, although some directors think it is. I don't believe in it. I like ups and downs. They're the best way to translate my feelings to the screen.

I cry sometimes. I get very upset.

When I felt upset and lost, music always had the answer.

I don't just want to upset people and shock people by saying something really outrageous.

Those who have a personality like Balotelli do things that other people maybe wouldn't. Balotelli sometimes does things that look strange and unbelievable. But maybe for him it's just a way to feel normal. He doesn't want to cause problems or upset people.

I believe social media gives away a lot to people. I got this impression long time back when my friend was on Twitter, and he got trolled because he posted his opinion about something. He was very upset about it, as he didn't expect that people will reply in such a nasty way.

At times, you have to maybe speak out of turn or say a little bit too much which upsets a few people.

It's strange. No one ever really talked to me about my voice. People started writing about it, and I was like, 'What?' I'm really about my lyrics, but more people were talking about my voice. It's cool, but at first I got upset because I wanted people to focus on the content.

Something I realized when I moved to America: people get these general American accents, but when they get angry or upset or excited, their original accents come out. It's something I noticed with my manager, because he's from New York, and the first time he got angry, he suddenly had this accent.