Quotes from Terence Trent D'Arby

I do have some very strange thoughts... Still, all geniuses are mad aren't they?

The system is very well regulated in L.A. It's designed to disconnect you from whatever your idea of yourself is. If you're among devils and they realise you're not a devil like they are, there's gonna be some great discomfort.

Everything that, by the grace of the universe, I was able to become is the direct result of everything I went through.

I am not a greedy person.

Songs come to me and I hear them. At least in part, they are very complete; I hear the whole chorus, including the drum pattern, the base, the countermelody, the basic harmonic structure and the main thrust of the lyric.

It's like I'm coming to a realization that I'm not Terence Trent D'Arby. I'm the soul playing a role of this character that was written.

In Milan, I'm treated with the respect that doctors receive in America. It's wonderful living where artists are revered.

I learned that I can't be as indulgent as I'd like to be when I record.

I don't have to worry about what the average record company person thinks because I am the record company person.

I was aware of all the artists who make good debut records over the years, but no one hears them - and I wanted to make sure that didn't happen in my case.

Everybody wants to go to heaven but very few people are willing to die.

I can only say this with all relative humility: I saw myself as a Beatle.

I've seen too many people who have been artists for a long time, on that cycle of record-promote-tour, and you look up and 10 years of your life is gone. I didn't want that to happen to me.

The artist is inherently a romantic to some degree, and as such, I believe in a muse. But I don't try to analyze too much where it comes from.

I want to be a member of the team that helps in any way possible for the evolution of people's souls. Because too much encourages us to spend too much time with our lower nature, and we have a higher nature as well.

I don't do many interviews.

I came around at a time when myself, Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna and George Michael, we were considered kind of dangerous.

One thing about Italians is you can't let them in your head. They're inquisitive. The English and Germans are a dog tribe; the Italians are cats. They're very helpful, but it's in their own rhythm, their own way, and it can drive you crazy.

Some small part of what the artist does is for approval of others.

The fact that you can even make a record and leave a document that you were here, that's nothing to sneeze at.

I've been privy to certain experiences which have allowed me to realize how fleeting time is, in any case, and how ultimately not important this is. 'This' being the things perhaps we trip on in life.

All artists are socialists until they see another artist with a bigger house than theirs.

So for my own survival and my growth, as a soul, as an artist and as an emotional being, it was best that I assume an identity I didn't have to fight anyone over or that I have to constantly engage in constant tug of wars and just reinvent myself.

Real talent is mixing realism with bluff. Every great artist I really respect has a certain amount of bluff; sooner or later you have to be a conjurer, and conjure images.