A Quote by Benji Madden

I think that 'Prayers' is a really interesting one because we wrote it well before the border crisis was happening, and in that first verse, I was actually writing about the experience of me and my wife's relationship and finding someone who you feel safe with and you relate to and can ponder existence with.
Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year old school girl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing.
When I began writing songs, there was a pretty direct line between what was happening in my life and what I wrote about. So my first album was really all about my failed attempts to make a particular relationship work.
I think my first hit was the first song I ever wrote. I actually wrote it in 2005 in college. The title of it is called "Ain't Ready”. It's just talkin about the relationship with a man and a woman, or even a woman and a woman; however you wanna look at it, and just that feeling of feeling like you're not ready for love and the other person is pushing for something that you don't want. I think that's something that a lot of people can relate to.
Before we started writing we did feel pressure because of the success of the first record. One of the first songs that we wrote was "Out Of My Heart" which is the first single. As soon as we wrote that, we knew we just set the standard and every other song had to be as good if not better.
The more foreign to me, to my existence, to your core existence, the more foreign the foreign language, it's really moving to me to think, to get to experience my own story crossing those boundaries. To have that experience that I so cherished as a reader. I can't believe this. To me, it's really nice because that would be a thing where I'm like, "There may be lots of Jews in my work. I'm not writing stories for Jews. I'm telling stories about people, and Jews are people, too."
The first two books that I did by myself were long stories in verse. I knew I could do that because I'd written a lot in verse. But, verse stories are hard to sell, so my editor encouraged me to try writing in prose.
Before I published anything, I dreamed of publication, but I didn't actually write for it. I imagined that writing for an audience was something for fancier people. I aspired, but mostly I wrote for myself. I wrote because it made me happy.
I actually think the border tax - the concept of border tax is more of a trade issue than it is a - so when we talk about income coming in, I believe border tax in its form, if we use that, reciprocal tax is a tax that I really love because basically nobody can fight it.
Working on 'Fresh Off the Boat' has been really enlightening to me because it's made me actually think about the roles that Asians and Asian-American women have played in media. Not because I didn't think it was important before, but because before, I was really focused on just paying my rent.
I think all kids feel that their lives are tough, and that they've, been given an unfair shake for one reason or another. So I think there's a lot of kids who relate to my story. They also relate to the fact that I got out of it. And I tell them that my refuge from all that was books - the library was my safe place. And the art room was my safe place because there I knew what I was doing.
I think that lyrically, 'Safe' is a very positive song: it's very strong; it's about keeping somebody safe and protecting people. I think everybody anywhere in the world can relate to it. I think everybody wants to feel safe; everybody wants to feel protected.
My wife, well she has extensive experience, because before becoming the first lady, she was the wife of the CEO of a large conglomerate. So I have very high hopes that she will carry out her job successfully as first lady of the Republic of Korea.
The script [of Regression] wasn't the draw for me. It was largely Alejandro [Amenabar] and his way of talking. To hear him talking about the script was way more interesting than the script. He wrote it, and so, English is his second language. It's an interesting thing. I've had that before. I was directed by Alfonso Cuarón before, too. It's always interesting when you're being directed by somebody like that. So much of directing is about communication, and finding the right words, and what it means, and how to convey certain emotions and ideas.
Architecture is really about well-being. I think that people want to feel good in a space... On the one hand it's about shelter, but it's also about pleasure. The intention is to really carve out of a city civic spaces and the more it is accessible to a much larger mass in public and it's about people enjoying that space. That makes life that much better. If you think about housing, education, whether schools and hospitals, these are all very interesting projects because in the way you interpret this special experience.
'Mine' was interesting because it was about the way that someone made me feel so loved - so beautiful, so special, so accepted. I knew that it was deeper than just writing a song about that.
When people speak to me of the torment of writing, I can think only of what it was like before I wrote: once writing meant writing and not thinking about writing, I knew nothing of any torment.
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