A Quote by James Murphy

For most of my life, making music has cost me money. So I learned to live very, very cheaply. — © James Murphy
For most of my life, making music has cost me money. So I learned to live very, very cheaply.
On the little money I had collected I lived in Berlin very cheaply, ate very cheaply. And already in 1920 I saved the first salaries I received to go to Munich.
When I started out, the most terrifying thing was when I had to be very, very emotional in front of lots of people. Now I've kind of learned that it is very important to keep talking all day, keep making jokes, and be connected with people, and be present. It's very important for me to be absolutely present in order to be emotional. I learned that is sort of the way I need to be.
My goal is to live the truly religious life, and express it in my music. If you live it, when you play there's no problem because the music is part of the whole thing. To be a musician is really something. It goes very, very deep. My music is the spiritual expression of what I am - my faith, my knowledge, my being.
I wouldn't have known when I was a teenager that when I was coming up to being a sixty-year-old woman that I'd be making music, I'd be recording music, talking about music, and incorporating my views on the world into the music-making. So it's a very rarefied place to be, and I'm very grateful for that.
From the time I was very young, I was a professional, making money and assuming responsibilities. I didn't live the life of a child. I was living the life of a 30-year-old.
Today, making money is very simple. But making sustainable money while being responsible to the society and improving the world is very difficult.
I used to say that I was making "country music," because it was the quickest, easiest answer. I'm obviously heavily influenced by country music. There was a three-year stint in my life where I listened to nothing else, so, I learned it very well.
I don't hold on to fear as much as I used to, because I've learned a lot about genuinely not caring what strangers think about me. It's very liberating. It's very empowering, and I've learned a lot of that from Jay-Shawn Carter-Z, because his approach to life is very internal. It's a very good lesson to learn.
I did have a very determined idea of making money. I was quite savvy about that. And that was my most basic lesson. You do have to understand the economics. It's pointless putting in all that work and losing money. If you're not making a profit you're stuffed.
Moonlight is very honest and very special to me. I feel like this is the most personal music I've made, by far. I'm very proud of it and I'm very excited. It's scary...it's vulnerable and kind of terrifying.
I don't view the fans in the way that most performers do. As a mass of people who have paid money, I know what they want. It's a very, very, very, very, very low common denominator.
I think I was just lucky to be brought up in a very musical family. My two older brothers were, and still are, very musical and very creative, and music was a big part of my life from a very young age, so it is quite natural for me to become involved in music in the way that I did.
Sadly most films only get exposure if they win an award or were in a festival, which is really difficult because those things cost money! Submitting your film to a festival or campaigning for an Oscar or a Golden Globe is very expensive. Most people don't know that, but all those events require a lot of money. If you have a small independent film, it's very hard to get the attention of people in those circles.
I've learned very, very, very clearly that money does not equal happiness or security, either.
David's [Cunningham] a very interesting character. He has more integrity than is good for him. So, everything he did after that sort of undermined what he'd done. Other people who kind of took life more cheaply, would have really gone for it. David almost did everything he could to scupper the whole thing, which I very much admire, but of course it was deeply irritating then, because we wanted to make a bit of money! So we made this very catchy tune and then he added a bunch of weird stuff which was all very strange.
What I learned from my work as a physician is that even with the most complicated patients, the most complicated problems, you've got to look hard to find every piece of data and evidence that you can to improve your decision-making. Medicine has taught me to be very much evidence-based and data-driven in making decisions.
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