A Quote by Frank McCourt

Way back in my mid-20s, I started making notes. I would just jot things down: lists of street names, songs, peculiar turns of speech, jokes, whatever. — © Frank McCourt
Way back in my mid-20s, I started making notes. I would just jot things down: lists of street names, songs, peculiar turns of speech, jokes, whatever.
Whenever I see interesting names, I jot them down. I've found them in lots of different places: on the news, in the phone book, even on hotel registry lists.
Basically I started to jot notes, lots of faxes back and forth to my writer, we faxed ideas throughout the whole first draft, and started all over again.
I have always lived my life by making lists: lists of people to call, lists of ideas, lists of companies to set up, lists of people who can make things happen. Each day I work through these lists, and that sequence of calls propels me forward.
People would say, "Oh, you say you just do jokes." I don't just do jokes. I do jokes. Jokes are important. They saved my life when I was younger. Hopefully we're making things nicer at the end of the day for people. That's the entire goal, and that's the touchstone and the North Star for the tone.
Me and Dre did all, from Wreckin' Cru to Ruthless, all that. We started making songs first... back then it was the slow songs, techno, whatever they called it back then. 'Planet Rock,' that kinda stuff.
The kids of today have taken over the music business - most of them very young. Simply because they write and jot down a few notes, they have the idea that they can write songs.
One can always come up with funny lists and jokes. You know what? I take it back. Not everyone can always come up with funny lists and some jokes. I'm very lucky to have a gift where I can do that pretty ably.
I've been a DJ since I was about 13, and I started out as a hip-hop DJ. So I was always playing records that would just get people going. I was just doing parties and high school dances and whatever, and then, progressively, I started making my own music, writing little songs here and there, but it was never anything crazy.
There was this very deliberate move to just overlay an American reality in Iraq. I've never actually seen the map, but apparently Americans thought the names of places were just too complicated so they got decent maps of Baghdad and just renamed everything with familiar names. This neighborhood would be Hollywood, that neighborhood would be Manhattan, and that one's Madison, you're going to drive down Oak and take a left on Main Street.
I keep a journal and just kind of take notes. I don't really so much sit down and write songs - I just take a lot of notes, and sometimes I sit down and put them all together.
When I started producing, I was just making music under all different names. 'Black Afro.' 'Super Grandmaster.' 'Mister Bull.' Like, the most stupid, idiotic names. 'Afrojack' was one of those idiotic names.
In my early to mid-20s, a fear of confrontation made it difficult for me to end relationships in a mature or even quasi-sane way. Instead, I would hang on resentfully, praying that my doomed beau would end things first and spare me the displeasure. To add hindrance to hang-up, the men I chose were usually just as stoic as I was.
I've been in the public eye so long, I can't remember how it was when it was different - from my mid-20s onwards, when my career started to blossom and I became an international, world cups and things.
It's more fun to have a name rather than a number. I think this gives our products a personality. I get the names from literature, movies, opera, traveling, nature, poetry, sometimes even the street. I keep a small book that I write in. I wake up in the middle of the night and jot down a name for a lipstick or an eyeshadow.
My friends started making music, and then I started making covers because I was like, 'I don't have anything to write, but I like music.' So I would just cover Frank Ocean songs.
Even if my songs are a bit low-spirited, they make me happy. I become happy when I hear sad songs. When you sing about sad things in a beautiful way, the atmosphere turns upside down
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