Quotes About Struggle

I don't enjoy songwriting.

Stand-up don't get no respect - it's the hardest thing to do in show business. You don't have no band and there's no music.

Trying to cope with the balance between home life and road life has been a theme in my music since early Red House Painters records.

Honestly, I don't recommend anyone get into music. If you have something else that you're good at, do that instead. This is a really tough world to live in.

I've pretty much run the circle of labels and dealing with that whole kind of battle, because you're the one creating the music, but you're not the final say. That's always been hard.

The Goth character was a difficult thing to get my head round. I'm not really a fan of Goth music. I'm more a piano and guitar man - that's what I love.

My first two records are so simply constructed. The reason isn't because I wanted to make simple music. It's because I don't really have the chops.

Rap music came along and saved my life. I started to tell the stories of the streets and that was my way out.

And woven into the fabric of this harsh existence was music.

Death lieth still in the way of life, Like as a stone in the way of a brook; I will sing against thee, Death, as the brook does, I will make thee into music which does not die.

When I first tried to get a record deal for my original music, labels didn't understand what these instruments were meant to be doing

I didn't really want to give up music.

Pop is the most competitive form of music there is. You are always fighting to be adopted and accepted by the masses, and it's always shifting.

I'm a fairly tormented artist, and I'm less willing to indulge myself in self-pity, outside of songwriting.

And as the players tried to take the field, the Marching Band refused to yield.

I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody.

Creating art (music, books, films, etc.) can be beautiful and liberating, but trying to sell art, well, that is the movie business. There are few winners, and lots and lots of losers.

Especially as an artist who has been signed to one of the majors throughout my last ten years, you don't always get to write your own music.

We're deaf men working as musicians; we play the music but we can't hear it.

Jazz is the music of unemployment.

There's music in everything, even defeat

I don't really understand why when I'm not making music, I feel like I can't breathe.

I don't know [whether] if I didn't get paid, or my career didn't keep going where it goes, if I would keep doing music.

I wore glasses, no music, and I won - I think it was - fifth place. I got a whipping the same day. My mother whipped me for something. Destroyed my ego completely.