Top 61 Quotes & Sayings by Brandi Carlile
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Brandi Carlile.
Last updated on April 22, 2025.
The hardest thing about being on the road is not being with my animals.
Every city has a town outside with a lake. I pull out my fishing pole and fish. I've been doing that for a long time.
My advice to new artists is to embrace a broader concept of timelessness than vintage or retro.
My mother's a singer and my mother's father is a singer, and everyone on both sides are all country-western bluegrass musicians.
There are still civil rights issues. There are still people who can't be visited by their spouse in the hospital because they're gay. These are humanitarian issues. At the end of the day, all you want is for people to be happy in the pursuit of life, love and liberty.
When I started out, I was definitely writing about experiences that I hadn't had yet. The songs were just based on my influences, songwriters that had written songs before me and that were more experienced and 20, 30 years older than me.
'Hallelujah' is going to be a standard that our grandkids, our great-great grandkids will learn to sing in church. It's one of those really, really special songs.
I love fishing, any kind of fishing.
I tend to feel really protective of songs, and if they aren't sitting well in a record, I'll pull them tight to my chest until I feel it's a better time.
When I turned 30, I started to feel all those miles. At times, you want to turn the faucet off a bit, but I never want to stop traveling. That's what it's all about - taking the music to the people.
I've read and heard that some of the most inspiring vocal interpreters adhere habitually to one rule: Always think the lyrics as you're singing them, so that the sentiment is always appropriate and heartfelt.
It's really important to me to promote worthy causes. But not in a heavy, obligatory, responsibility way. I really admired that as a kid, learning about the 'Elton John AIDS Foundation.' And I was obsessed with The Indigo Girls. And they are the consummate activist group, always reaching out, especially to Native causes and things like that.
I stand firm behind the belief that, for me, songwriting isn't something that I do or command, it happens to me. I can either choose to stop and acknowledge it, or put it off and hope that it won't fade away. 'That Wasn't Me' is no exception - it came together more quickly than any other song I have ever constructed on my own.
You know, your first album is about really amazing things. Your first album is always about coming of age, first love, first loss, usually you suffer a first loss of someone that you love to death, even, you know, really big life lessons, things you learn from your parents' divorce or from the travels that you took.
I'd love to claim the title of 'songwriter' or 'intellectual,' but the truth is that anything that I ever learned how to do in conjunction with music was purely so that I would have a platform to sing from.
I hope that somewhere in Small Town, U.S.A., a 15-year-old kid looks to me as a role model the way I looked at the Indigo Girls and Elton John as role models.
People that could yodel always fascinated me. People that could sing loud always fascinated me. So I started trying to mimic at a really young age: 6, 7 years old.
When we were doing 'Live at Benaroya,' the song 'I Will' was hard to get through. I've always get a big lump in my throat when I sing that song. And also 'Before It Breaks.' So I'm just a different songwriter now. And the older I get, the more difficult it becomes to deliver those songs casually.
I tend to support and get behind issues instead of candidates, because of the whole 'Super Bowl' generalization of our world - You're on this side, I'm on that side; you're a Republican, I'm a Democrat; you're country music, I'm rock music.
Singing is a form of meditation... apparently the only one that I have command over.
Colorado is an oasis, an otherworldly mountain place. I've played so many shows in Colorado that I think I'm the Colorado house band.
My songwriting is so influenced by orchestrated music, dramatic, super glam rock-y stuff. Two of my biggest influences in songwriting were Elton John and Freddie Mercury.
I didn't get bullied any more than anybody else. I think I got bullied more for being poor than being gay. But no more than any other kid. And I'm sure that I did my fair share of picking on other kids, too. We're all humans.
I think I was probably looking for gay role models when I was younger, before I even knew or thought I was gay. I didn't really make the connection that they were gay, but I felt drawn to them because they were going against the grain, and I knew there was something that they had that everybody else didn't have. It was an edge.
I'm really tough. It's a state of mind.
My wife even thinks our next album should be recorded in our house, and we should move all the furniture out to the garage. I'm not sure how many spouses would be supportive of that, much less come up with the idea.
Writing is sort of putting a puzzle together halfway. Then, performing it has always been the completion of it. Once that happens, I'm feeling verbally communal with other people. It's out there and I feel so much better about it.
I grew up in a single-wide, three-bedroom mobile home with my family. And now I see them, like, half a dozen times a year. Figuring out how to come home and talk to them again and feel like myself has probably been the greatest challenge.
Wherever is your heart I call home.
Privilege and complacency paralyze me with fear sometimes. But the less vulnerable we are because of privilege, the country we're born in, or the security we enjoy, the more vulnerable our souls are to apathy.
Cousins are forever and forever are cousins they stand by your side for you no matter what.
I used to turn to nature and animals a lot. And fishing. I spend time still with my Bible and the gospel music, and I still have to feed the animals! But my wife and daughter have brought me a world of perspective when I'm feeling just a little "extra important."
I feel like the kindest thing that I do to my voice is sing.
But I'm warning you, we're growing up.
There is a creator and a redeemer, and the purpose of it all is love.
All of these lines across my face, tell you the story of who I am. So many stories of where I've been and how I got to where I am.
If I learned to play guitar it was so that I would have something to sing to, if I learned to write a song it was so that I would have something to sing. So the gut feeling you're talking about comes from singing and communicating the lyrics and what it is that we feel.
Even before I had a daughter, I was passionate about global women's issues, but now that she's here, I'm even more inspired to leave a better world for Evangeline.
The first thing I think of when I think about coming to Las Vegas and playing is always Elvis; its always the first thing on my mind.
Sometimes seeming happy can be self-destructive even when you're sane.
You can't change people, but most importantly, unless you're their momma, you don't even know what's best for them.
I'm not so arrogant to consider mine the only legitimate art form. I can't in one breath make a fuss about someone compartmentalizing music into genre and then in the next accuse advertising and short film of not being art.
I believe that writing for me is in a way like wisdom; in that as soon as you feel like you've got it figured out you stop growing and maybe even lose something.
I have vocal trouble from time to time associated with sleep or wine! Or from sleeping in a bunk the size of a coffin and breathing in bus air conditioning all day.
The oppression of women is the single most corrosive and urgent problem of our time.
In life, I'm most inspired by entertaining people and driven by the desire to do it by such a powerful force that I think it influences everything I do.
I'm not sure I'll ever be famous by anyone's definition. I can only hope to be allowed by the audience to continue my life's work.
People sing each other's songs and they cultivate standards. That's the reason why we have folk music and folk stories. History is told through song.
It's impossible to just come up with one thing that I could say to the world. That's why I've spent my life in the pursuit of the opportunity to sing to it. Summing it up goes against what fuels me.
The purpose of it all is love.
You can dance in a hurricane, but only if you're standing in the eye.
The mole can't live in your dollhouse.
Bear the burdens of others, but don't put them in your pocket too.
When I was younger, I was always running into other girls involved in music. When I was about 14 or 15, one of my friend's dads was an Elvis impersonator and asked us to sing backups at a rehearsal. I did well and was hired. Did that for about two years.
But now, with the last two years of touring and being on the road, I've learned that a live show should never sound like a record; a record should sound like a live show.
Coffee, whiskey, and fishing poles. That’s really all you need in life.
There's a lot of really inspiring music coming around the bend - we tend to believe that to sound classic or timeless is to sound vintage or retro. It's a little bit dangerous, because you'll really miss a chance to make your mark as a generation.
I was born when I met you, now I'm dying to forget you
So much of the way a singer physically damages their voice could be caused by stress or nerves. I would never be so brazen as to assume that it's the only problem but there's got to be a reason that a martial artist can harness enough peace to smash his head through a cinder block without leaving a scratch.
Privilege and complacency paralyze me with fear sometimes.
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