A Quote by Gustavo Santaolalla
Actually, my first group was a folkloric group, an Argentine folkloric group when I was 10. By the time I was 11 or 12 I started writing songs in English. And then after a while of writing these songs in English it came to me that there was no reason for me to sing in English because I lived in Argentina and also there was something important [about Spanish], so I started writing in Spanish.
Related Quotes
English has always been my musical language. When I started writing songs when I was 13 or 14, I started writing in English because it's the language in between. I speak Finnish, I speak French, so I'll write songs in English because that's the music I listen to. I learned so much poetry and the poetic way of expressing myself is in English.
Writing in English was a major challenge. I didn't want other songwriters to write for me. I wanted to preserve the spirit of my songs in Spanish. I am the same Shakira in English as I am in Spanish.
I spent ten years in London; I trained there. But because I started in English, it kind of feels the most natural to me, to act in English, which is a strange thing. My language is Spanish; I grew up in Argentina. I speak to my family in Spanish, but if you were to ask me what language I connect with, it'd be English in some weird way.
I started writing - just generally - when I was 10, there, and started writing songs when I was maybe 11 turning 12.
I read everything I could find in English - Twain, Henry James, Hemingway, really everything. And then after a while I started writing shorter pieces in English, and one of them got published in a literary magazine and that's how it got started. After that, graduate school didn't seem very important.
I was raised speaking English and Spanish. And I also speak Danish. And I can get by in French and Italian. I've acted in Spanish and English, but when something has to do with emotions, sometimes I feel I can get to the heart of the matter better in Spanish.
I started writing short stories. I tried writing horror, mystery, science fiction. I joined a little critique group here in town and ran my stories past them. After about three years, I tackled my first novel, Subterranean. It took me 11 months to write.
It's easier for me to act in Spanish, but as soon as I get the lines in English and I know them by heart, it becomes really easy. You don't have to worry about the language anymore. It just takes more time. In Spanish, I can learn lines in 10 minutes. In English, it's going to take an hour.
I see creative-writing classes as some sort of AA meeting. It is more of a support group for people who write than an actual course in which you learn writing skills. This support group is extremely important because there is something very lonely about writing.
When you sing in English and Spanish, it's two completely different forms of expression and... even the people who don't speak Spanish love to hear me sing in Spanish.
It taught the English to speak Spanish and it taught the Spanish to speak English. If we had more songs such as that, it would solve the immigration problem in a hurry. But there can't be another 'Feliz Navidad.'
When I started writing seriously in high school, English was the language I had at my disposal - my Spanish was domestic, colloquial, and not particularly literary or sophisticated.
I always lived in a multilingual society (Polish-Ukrainian, German-Ukrainian, English-Ukrainian), and was open to outside linguistic influences. I think it was within three years of coming to the US that I started writing in English, although purely for myself, not trying to get it published. Living in America, I was constantly in touch with English, and Ukrainian was for me a private language.
I'm older than my sister so I started writing first. I started writing at school. I was always top of my class in composition, essays, English Lit and all of that.
I must confess, my Spanish is not so good - except I read a little, so I started with the English but then determined that it would have to be in Spanish.
Actually, I've taught creative writing in Turkey, at an English language university, where the students were native Turkish speakers, but they were writing their essays in English, and they were very interesting - even the sense of structure, the conventions of writing, the different styles of writing.
Related Authors
Ani DiFranco Quotes
American
Musician
Bob Dylan Quotes
American
Musician
Brian Eno Quotes
British
Musician
Bruce Springsteen Quotes
American
Musician
David Bowie Quotes
English
Musician
Drake Quotes
Canadian
Musician
Elton John Quotes
English
Musician
George Harrison Quotes
British
Musician
Henry Rollins Quotes
American
Musician
John Lennon Quotes
English
Musician
Madonna Ciccone Quotes
American
Musician
Moby Quotes
American
Musician
Nicki Minaj Quotes
American
Musician
Patti Smith Quotes
American
Musician
Thom Yorke Quotes
English
Musician
Tori Amos Quotes
American
Musician