Quotes About Inspiration

Everything I do is gauged under the shadow of 'Dil Chahta Hai.' Even 'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara' and 'Rock On,' which are very urban films. So I am always seen through that lens.

People do not realise that many of my works are done in urban places. I was brought up on the edge of Leeds, five miles from the city centre-on one side were fields and on the other, the city.

I actually am a country music fan. I listen to a lot of Blake Shelton and Carrie Underwood and Maren Morris and Keith Urban.

When I started out as a cover band, I was obsessed with Keith Urban and Jason Aldean and Eric Church; those are the songs I chose to sing as a cover band.

I have my own production company called Urban Dreams.

After going to a few Keith Urban concerts, I thought, 'I'd really like to learn how to play guitar.' I studied Keith Urban a lot and how he performed.

When I was growing up, David Bowie was my idol. I grew up in inner-city London, and he was from Brixton, which is even more urban.

Urban is not actually my world. It was me trying something out, basically. I come from a gospel background.

I really didn't try to make an effort to make urban music, but I am a product of my inspirations.

I'm happy to see somebody from the urban community that could go out and make a half-a-billion dollars.

English urban artists were very used to making secondhand American music, and I thought that was boring.

Everyone's looking to the urban scene for inspiration now.

Dizzee's just my childhood hero. He's definitely the inspiration. He's got himself to a very good place. He's defied the expectations of what British black urban music was like. He was the first person who made the rest of Britain realise it wasn't just a one-album-type situation. You've got to take your hat off to somebody like that.

Part of my life is spent designing in urban centers, and part of my life has been spent in factories. But the other part of my life is spent in nature.

I found 'Bordertown' when I was standing on the border between childhood and my teens, and it carried me past that transition. In the process, it helped to create the next step of its own evolution: the modern urban fantasy owes a lot more to 'Bordertown' than many people will ever know.

I'm not sure I could write a straight urban fantasy any more than I could write a straight contemporary story. I would end up being intimidated by all the small details.

I look up to Rihanna and Rita Ora. They obviously wear a lot of gold jewelry and have this urban feel to them.

I've always been interested in the Greek tragedies. A few years back, I re-read a translation of the 'The Oresteia,' and that stayed with me, and slowly this idea of using some of those old legends and plays to tell a new story about modern urban life began to form.

For several years before I began 'The Folded World,' I worked at an urban college campus and had a job in a tutoring center, and people would come into the tutoring center, and for some reason, they just kept telling me their life stories.

I love 50 Cent. I know it sounds weird 'cause a lot of kids might not say that right now, but I definitely want to work with 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Coldplay: I want to work with different artists that are going to push my music to a new level. Not just in urban music.

And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty Creator.

Getting to do shows with Lady Antebellum, Keith Urban, and Sam Hunt is just awesome. It's so inspiring because I grew up such fans of Lady A and Keith, and to be able to sing my songs on the same stage as them and then stand side stage and watch them is just a really special thing.

I see myself writing in the tradition of urban ethnography and in the tradition of the sociology of poverty.

I want to do more urban R&B with a little bit of pop, but not much. I want to have that soulful kind of side of me come out.