A Quote by Maurice Sendak
William Blake really is important, my cornerstone. Nobody ever told me before he did that childhood was such a damned serious business.
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Sendak is in search of what he calls a "yummy death". William Blake set the standard, jumping up from his death bed at the last minute to start singing. "A happy death," says Sendak. "It can be done." He lifts his eyebrows to two peaks. "If you're William Blake and totally crazy.
Being kind is the most important thing I've ever been taught. That's what my parents always told me - more important than ambition or success is being kind to people. The cornerstone of my life. What I aspire to is to be kind.
Being kind is the most important thing Ive ever been taught. Thats what my parents always told me - more important than ambition or success is being kind to people. The cornerstone of my life. What I aspire to is to be kind.
Before 'Lucky Louie,' nobody would ever cast me to play a mom or a wife; nobody ever saw me in that role, which is weird, since that's who I really am.
I really liked Quentin Blake, who did all of Roald Dahl's stuff. I don't think I really got Quentin Blake as a kid, but as I grew older, I really appreciated the kind of knowledge and the skill that went into those seemingly effortless drawings, and I really wanted to capture some of that in my own work.
Two more years were to go by before I knew anything about William Blake. Many years later, when his wife died, my godfather gave me the two books as a remembrance.
The best advice I got really had nothing to do with singing; it came from my brother, who always told me to stick to my guns and to believe in myself. I think Duane saw my talents and believed in me long before I ever did, and that meant the world to me.
Sometimes, I think there's a lack of ambition in me. But then sometimes, I think, no, you can, like William Blake said, you know, see heaven in a grain of sand. If you look really, really closely at a situation, you can find almost endless interest in it.
The Rolling Stones were an inkling towards an appreciation of the unity of music, dance and words. Any of the black R&B people who had a stage show that involved dancing, music and words did the same thing, except that I thought Jagger's words were good, his music was good and his dancing was good. I spoke to him about Blake and tried to get him to sing [William] Blake's The Grey Monk, to use his words as lyrics. He didn't do it. In the end, I did it myself.
I sang 'O Holy Night' with the Vatican orchestra, but also a Blake - a lullaby that William Blake wrote for the Christ child, and I set it to music, and the Vatican orchestra played the music.
What really fueled me, and maybe infuriated me, is that nobody believed in me. Nobody. I don't even think I believe in myself. Part of what I was trying to do was to make the decision to go into business and find the guts to see it through. I was told that when I went in to see the bankers that I was supposed to be very muted, that I was supposed to blend in, that I was supposed to have the typical drab suit on.
I hear you guys all the time talking about Daniel Bryan, trained by Shawn Michaels. One curious thing to me is, how come you guys never mention William Regal? William Regal did the real work with this young man. Shawn Michaels took $3,000 from him, that's all he ever did.
I remember once being told by a casting person, years ago, that I shouldn't pursue a career in the business because of the color of my skin. The fact that I remember it today means it stuck with me. I thought that was really stupid advice and advice nobody should ever give someone.
The first artist that did it for me with just production was James Blake... I was just blown away... I feel like James Blake kind of was the one that introduced me into that world.
I wasn't ever unable to function, but I did realize at some point that I had built a wall between myself and my childhood by saying, "I'm so glad that's over. Nothing can ever be as bad again," without understanding that my childhood was still very much with me.
The people I really admire, like William Blake and John Coltrane and Richard Wagner, had these ridiculously full universes that took their entire lives to describe.
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