We have grafted, we write our own music, we are great performers - we put our life and soul into it. So when people say, 'Why are they wearing that?' you just want to say, 'Did you hear the vocals? Did you see the performance? Did you see how much went into it?'
I've always found when I was captain when other people were doing the talking for me, I didn't need to say as much, and when I did say one or two things, people tended to listen all the more.
I would ask my dad what he did, and he'd say, 'I listen to people's problems.' In some way what he did for a living is in my genes.
Don't say I was tough. I was strong. I had to be, because Ronnie liked everybody and sometimes didn't see - or refused to see - what the people around him were really up to. But everything I did, I did for Ronnie. I did for love.
I grew up on a farm in a small town where you do or say one thing and everybody knows about it. You see it happen, there's always the town gossip - 'Oh did you hear about so and so, or did you hear what went on in this household?' So I learned at a very young age just to keep my mouth shut.
I’ve learnt to listen. I don’t think I always did listen. Not just in plays, but in life. And you have to hear what people are saying before you can respond.
Will not the Lord hear my prayers and listen to my cries as soon as he ever did to theirs [the ancient saints'] if I come to him in the manner they did?
I'm making music for other people to listen to for pleasure. And hopefully, later on maybe they'll listen to it and go, "That bass line, boy, did you hear the way those drums interacted with that?"
Write. Write every day. Write honestly. Write something that doesn’t exist, and you wish did. Read. Learn. Study. Watch people. Listen to what they say, listen to how they say it and listen to what they do not say. Surprise yourself. Scare yourself.
We left. We did not say: Don't drive, You're drunk. We did not say: We aren't letting you in that car when you are upset. We did not say: We insist on going with you. We did not say: This can wait until tomorrow. Anything-everything-can wait.
You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them. I did worship them but now I am alone on a rock hewn out of my own body.
It was said of him that he did not say much, but that when he did everyone stopped to listen.
The novelist's ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say.
I went into 'RuPaul's Drag Race' saying, 'I'll never cry.' Because they make fun of every queen that cries on the show. And I did cry, and I did scream, and I did have doubt, and I did have great, victorious moments.
It's very difficult to speak to a large group of people these days and not offend someone. I know people walk around with their feelings on their shoulders waiting for you to say something - ahh - did you hear that? And they can't hear anything else you say. The PC police are out in force at all times.
The world is wrong. You can't put the past behind you. It's buried in you; it's turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be stored in you. Who did what to whom on which day? Who said that? She said what? What did he just do? Did she really say that? He said what? What did she do? Did I hear what I think I heard? Did that just come out of my mouth, his mouth, your mouth? Do you remember when you sighed?