It's from being melancholy and having my human down experiences that I learn, that I overcome, that I transform - and these realizations I put into song. That's what I choose to put in my backpack and carry with me around the world.
Unlike Europe, China can't be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they've been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don't see any need to.
Look, if you're driving down the highway at 120 miles an hour, I'd rather be behind the wheel than in the backseat.
When you get knocked down, you got to get backup. Otherwise, you are going to lose.
I will say, I can definitely throw down a sick beat once in a while and provide an amazing backup track for somebody who can really, actually freestyle.
Never look backwards or you'll fall down the stairs.
There are alway going to be bad things. But you can write it down and make a song out of it.
I like to think that even if we make some really bad choices and go down some bad paths, we'll eventually emerge from it.
On my bad days, sitting down and meditating was the last thing I wanted to do.
He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.
The economic recession in America wasn't caused by bad luck; it was caused by bad Republican policies. But the Republican candidates are doubling down on the same flawed policies that led to the loss of 3.6 million jobs in the final months of 2008 and gravely affected middle class families across America.
In the beginning I used to make one terrible play a game. Then I got so I'd make one a week and finally I'd pull a bad one about once a month. Now, I'm trying to keep it down to one a season.
When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do well, that's Memoirs.
The only advice you can give is, 'Don't let the bad stuff keep you down.'
It's because finance is so baffling that makes being an economist such a safe option. It nestles down comfortably with psychiatry and astrology as a profession where getting it patently wrong is just not a problem - and also, rather wonderfully, seems to have no adverse affect on their professional standing whatsoever.
Letting ourselves down in some fashion is such an integral part of daily life that the paucity of literature on the subject is baffling.
I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader - or any person - in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.
Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?
I had a hard-scrabble childhood with my parents. I have a lot of baggage. To come down to the footlights and accept the audience's affection inside a Broadway theater - that didn't come easily to me.
So-called designer bags are useless, and most are also ugly, faddish and overpriced. Pared down and sleek is always best.
