Quotes by Tracy Chapman

• I may be revered or defamed and decried; But I tried to live my life right.
• 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.
• 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.
• We all must live our lives always feeling, always thinking the moment has arrived.
• We have more media than ever and more technology in our lives. It's supposed to help us communicate, but it has the opposite effect of isolating us.
• Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control.
• Some things remain fragments, just the lyrics and melodies or a line or two or a verse.
• 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.
• 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.
• Love's a recurring theme through my work.
• I'm a hopeful cynic.
• I often write either really early in the morning, or really late at night.
• I learn all these things about the record talking about it after it's finished.
• 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.
• I dressed up as a veterinarian for a Halloween costume party. I had the lab coat. I got a couple of stuffed animals for patients and put bandages on them.
• 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.
• At this point in my life I'd like to live as if only love mattered.
• After it's finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration.
• 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.
• 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!
• 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.