Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility.
Often for me, if I hear a song I know, it clicks for me and I hear it in a different way and I think, "I could sing that song. I've got something to say about that song. Wanting to connect with an audience and wanting them to rethink songs; it is actually important to do songs they're familiar with. Also, I love those songs. In a way, I think I've changed people's perceptions of what a cabaret show like this could be.
I think since the systematic emergence of terrorism and the assassination attempts, everything has tightened. My hope is that it loosens back up once I leave.
It is always important in matters of high politics to know what you do not know. Those who think they know, but are mistaken, and act upon their mistakes, are the most dangerous people to have in charge.
I think sometimes could I only have music on my own terms, could I live in a great city, and know where I could go whenever I wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves, that were a bath and a medicine.
I think the pearls - one is a necklace, and another you have five hundred pounds of pearls, which may be one million pearls in a bowl - really show a kind of [society] condition.
Certainly the details of our life are unique. Spending time thinking of how I am different from someone else, however, does not tend to be very productive.
Doing is very good, but that comes from thinking. Little manifestations of energy through the muscles are called work. But where there is no thought, there will be no work. Fill the brain, therefore, with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.
Winston Churchill used to say that we, Americans, try every other option before we finally do the right thing. After everything else is exhausted we eventually do the right thing and I think that's true for Congress as well. And it's important for Americans to remember that politics has always been messy.