A Quote by Suzan-Lori Parks

Someone yelled at me once, 'You never write about yourself.' People used to get so mad at me for that. But my definition of myself is completely up for grabs. I'm everywhere, just like we all are.
If someone does something that makes me mad, well, chances are it'll probably make other people mad if I do it, too. I like to think, 'What's the meanest thing, the rudest thing I can say right now?' Or how can I completely discredit someone? That's just my mentality.
All my life, people have asked me what I was so mad about. 'Why you so mad?' And I was never mad. I'm not mad, I just look mad.
I don't think you can ever get used to being this famous. I've learnt how to keep things separate or at a distance. I've nothing to hide. But seeing this as work, like a job, means I can take a step back. It's me right now in front of you and in the papers but it's not all of me. If you give yourself entirely to the business, you'd end up going mad. And I'm not mad. Not yet.
What were you thinking? You just met him. (Selena) I know. It’s so not like me, but I couldn’t help myself. It was just like that weird magnetic force that grabs me when I’m walking past the Frostbyte Café and makes me swerve in to get a triple scoop of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. The power of temptation was just too much, Selena. I couldn’t resist it. He was a Chunky Monkey container and all I could think was, ‘Someone give me a spoon.’ (Sunshine)
My dad one time told me, he was like, 'The only time you should lie is when someone's holding a gun to your head and says 'Okay, lie or I'm going to shoot you.' And that really stuck with me. I think about that a lot. I used to not be really honest with girls and then I dropped a song called "Starry Room" and then I started turning over a new leaf. Now, I'm completely honest with girls all the time and they just get mad at me.
We cheated, you and me, and someone noticed. I noticed you; someone else noticed me. It hurts us. That's not so bad. So many people cheat. Everywhere on every level. Everyone's cheated. I'm just saying that you don't need to see yourself as a cheater. Because that's not who you are. You're someone who cheated. There's a difference, and you should try to get that difference, or that's who you'll grow up to be.
I used to see a lot of cocaine. There were journalists who used cocaine and didn't write about it and I didn't write about it. I would never do drugs, so I would always get the same response from people: "Smart kid, more for me." Whether it was a joke or sincere or both, but I was just happy not to be in there partying with the band like some of these other journalists.
I've had a lot of people in my past who were friends with me just to get publicity. When I was young, my mom or sister used to have to point out if someone was using me to make a name for themselves ? you know, linking arms with me on the red carpet and trying to get in every picture. But now I can see for myself when someone is just hungry for attention.
I've learned a lot of things about myself through singing. I used to have a certain dislike of the audience, not as individual people, but as a giant body who was judging me. Of course, it wasn`t really them judging me. It was me judging me. Once I got past that fear, it freed me up, not just when I was performing but in other parts of my life.
I hate getting yelled at, that'll get you on my bad side. My mom never yelled at me. She just told us what needed to be done and we did it.
When a guy would write some scathing article about me, that used to really bother me. I didn't get it. I'm like, What is that? You don't know me... That ate me up.
The main thing you worry about is just coming up with songs at all. I don't sit down and write stuff like certain writers do. They think about what they are going to write first and then they write it. I just get what comes in at me. It's like I'm a musician and if I can keep my mitt on, I can catch the balls that come at me.
Every morning I wake up and I tell myself this: It's just one day, one twenty-four-hour period to get yourself through. I don't know when exactly I started giving myself this daily pep talk--or why. It sounds like a twelve-step mantra and I'm not in Anything Anonymous, though to read some of the crap they write about me, you'd think I should be. I have the kind of life a lot of people would probably sell a kidney to just experience a bit of. But still, I find the need to remind myself of the temporariness of a day, to reassure myself that I got through yesterday, I'll get through today.
Kids end up seeing my movies anyway but some of the mothers get mad at me so I figured I'd make one that I can't get yelled at for.
I can never get my ideas across to people where they totally understand it completely, so I'm just like: 'I'm going to do it myself, cause nobody can do it like me.'
I just write all the time. In my whole life I've never had what I've heard people talk about writer's block. I've never had that. Life is like a song to me. I just hear everything in music, so I have never once thought "Well, I'm never gonna be able to write again." I've got thousands of songs.
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