I was given the gifts of the artist, and the trouble that goes with them: So I have that blessing, and there was never a time thatI questioned it or doubted it.... For forty years, I wanted to jump out of windows.
I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going. I have been forty years a slave and forty years free and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all.
Many ... have tremendous God-given gifts, but they don't focus on the development of those gifts. Who are these individuals? You've never heard of them- and you never will .
I bought Windows 2.0, Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1415926, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows RSVP, The Best of Windows, Windows Strikes Back, Windows Does Dallas, and Windows Let's All Buy Bill Gates a House the Size of Vermont.
I never felt the urge to jump off a bridge, but there are times I have wanted to jump out of my life, out of my skin.
I never questioned I would have any trouble doing what I wanted to do. I'm not talking about getting to a certain position - or to success. It was just that I knew I wanted to act, and that I would make my living that way. Having the unconditional support of your parents is really freeing.
A lot of people like to say that they have trouble getting gifts. I have trouble giving them. It's not out of a lack of generosity, mind you. My fallback is to go big, no matter what the occasion.
For forty years I have play the oboe, and still I never know what is coming out. It is a perpetual anxiety. But maybe this is good-I have never the time to get myself bored.
Moses spent forty years in the king's palace thinking that he was somebody; then he lived forty years in the wilderness finding out that without GOD he was a nobody; finally he spent forty more years discovering how a nobody with GOD can be a somebody.
I liked working with Republicans. We had five pretty good years after we had that bad year in '95 that culminated in two government shutdowns. But then they really decided that they liked being in the majority for the first time in forty years, and they wanted to get some things done, and I agreed, to get things I wanted. It was all perfectly transparent. Everybody knew what they wanted and what I wanted.
I never doubted at all. If you ever doubt then you are in trouble. I never thought: 'I should do this or that in case I don't make it.' I never had a back-up plan.
Moses spent forty years thinking he was somebody; forty years learning he was nobody; and forty years discovering what God can do with a nobody.
I never wanted to be called a fan, and that's no disrespect to any artist who calls them fans, but I never wanted a boundary in between the people listening to my music and me - for them to feel like I'm doing something that they can't do.
I never wanted to be that fad type of artist. When I looked up to artists, watching TV, I wanted to see somebody. I wanted to touch that person. I wanted to sound like them. I wanted to move like them. That' s what I want my fans to do. So that's why, everything that I do, the music I make, how I dress, it's all based off my lifestyle.
If upon this earth we ever have a glimpse of heaven,it is when we pass a home in winter, at night,and through the windows, the curtains drawn aside,we see the family about the pleasant hearth; the old lady knitting; the cat playing with the yarn;the children wishing they had as many dolls or dollars or knivesor somethings, as there are sparks going out to join the roaring blast;the father reading and smoking, and the clouds rising like incense from the altar of domestic joy.I never passed such a house without feeling thatI had received a benediction.
Static puppets, I wanted them to move, they're looking out the windows, but we didn't have time to rig those. I have more ideas than I can execute also every time that I do anything. I put the puppets in because people love 'em. I'm a populist in that sense.
We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep--it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself.