Top 40 Tracy Chapman Quotes

I meet people in my daily life, people who seem to experience some change and some growth on a personal level, and that gives me hope.

I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!

I think religion played a huge part in Bush’s re-election.

There have been some gains made in terms of more equality for women in the workplace and in the way the legal system deals with issues of violence against women.

I never assumed I would have that commercial success, so it was a total surprise. And honestly, I never assumed that it would ever happen again.

My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it.

I’m still thinking and hoping there’s an opportunity for people to have better lives and that significant change can occur.

I’m not sure about anything as far as religion and spirituality go.

There are good reasons for being in jail – for protesting.

Everyone is looking for connections between the songs. I don’t usually approach a record as a concept. There’s no overriding theme I’m trying to represent. It’s all about the individual songs.

That’s one of the things I like about San Francisco. It’s not like anywhere else in the world.

Honestly, I think, as an artist, it’s everything that’s in your life that informs what you do. So, obviously, growing up in Cleveland has played a big role in how I see the world.

I learn all these things about the record talking about it after it’s finished.

I don’t know – I’m not sure about anything as far as religion and spirituality go.

So much has happened to obscure the dialogue about race and about gender and discrimination in general, especially where those things touch on economics.

We do need to think about how we have security – everyone has a right to that – but we also need to think about how we maintain civil rights and personal freedom.

The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I’ve felt, or something somebody’s told me. It all comes together.

People’s real hopes and dreams can be distorted and misdirected and packaged until you’re not sure what you really want or what you even really need.

I can’t think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else’s expectations of what you should be. You don’t make art by consensus.

When you feel like you’ve had a good show, you go backstage and you talk to yourself about it, and if you have a bad show you talk to yourself about it.

I don’t try to project any image at all, other than the person that I am.

As a child, I spent a lot of time at the library.

If you are living a life that feels right to you, if you’re willing to take creative chances or a creative path that feels like it’s mostly in keeping with your sensibilities, you know, aesthetic and artistic, then that’s what matters.

I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don’t have a little list of topics to write about.

As a child I always had a sense of social conditions and political situations. I think it had to do with the fact that my mother was always discussing things with my sister and me – also because I read a lot.

One of the reasons I chose Tufts is that they have one of the best veterinary schools in the country. Since I was six years old, I wanted to be a veterinarian.

You need to keep something for yourself. As a writer, I feel that even more strongly. I feel like I need to be able to freely observe the world. That’s the way I like to move through the world; I don’t need to be the focus of attention. If I am, it impairs my ability to write and to do what I do.

I think of the audience the way I would think of another person: You meet someone, then you take it from there; you see what’s interesting to both of you.

The way popular music is categorized and formatted cuts down on everyone’s options. And although people don’t talk about it, there are a lot of issues of race determining musical categories of what’s rock, R&B, or even folk. It ends up restricting creativity.

At this point in my life I’d like to live as if only love mattered.

Music was never just a hobby for me. I’d pick up a guitar every day to work on whatever I was writing at the time. I would put my ideas in songs the way some people might put them in diaries or journals.

What does the future look like if the heads of society ask our young people to risk their lives for questionable causes? I think it looks rather bleak.

I think it’s important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in.

I could make records at home in a vacuum, but that is not the situation. I’m just taking it one phase at a time.

It’s fun playing small venues.

When we started making ‘Where You Live’, I bought a bunch of Polaroid cameras in so that people could record the experience. Some of those pictures are in the CD sleeve.

With other people, you’re always swapping music. Somebody is always listening to something you’ve never heard. It’s a great way to hear all sorts of new things.

We all must live our lives always feeling, always thinking the moment has arrived.

You have to pay attention to the moment and make it the best it can be for you. I’ve been trying to do that. It’s really made a major difference for me. I’m a happier person.

A lot of kids spent more time out of school than in, but I always loved school and thought it was my way out of Cleveland, and out of poverty.