Top 67 Tracy Chapman Quotes
#1. There's a power in words. There's a power in being able to explain and describe and articulate what you know and feel and believe about the world, and about yourself.
Tracy Chapman
#2. I never assumed I would have that commercial success, so it was a total surprise. And honestly, I never assumed that it would ever happen again.
Tracy Chapman
#4. This youthful heart can love you and give you what you need, but I'm too old to go chasing you around wasting my precious energy.
Tracy Chapman
#5. Have faith in humankind a respect for what is earthly and an unfaltering belief in peace and understanding
Tracy Chapman
#6. I don't want someone to squeeze me, that might take away my life. Just want someone to hold me, and we'll rock through the night.
Tracy Chapman
#7. I learn all these things about the record talking about it after it's finished.
Tracy Chapman
#8. I think of the audience the way I would think of another person: You meet someone, then you take it from there; you see what's interesting to both of you.
Tracy Chapman
#9. Some things remain fragments, just the lyrics and melodies or a line or two or a verse.
Tracy Chapman
#10. Consume more than you need This is the dream Make you pauper Or make you queen I won't die lonely I'll have it all prearranged A grave that's deep and wide enough For me and all my mountains o'things
Tracy Chapman
#11. There are good reasons for being in jail - for protesting.
Tracy Chapman
#12. My old man's got a problem, he lives with the bottle.
Tracy Chapman
#13. Who took away the part so essential to the whole Left you a hollow body Skin and bone.
Tracy Chapman
#14. 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!
Tracy Chapman
#15. We all must live our lives always feeling, always thinking the moment has arrived.
Tracy Chapman
#16. After it's finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration.
Tracy Chapman
#17. Growing up in Cleveland, I learned about singing from my mother, who had once sung professionally and who admired Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin.
Tracy Chapman
#18. Men are able to sustain a career into their 50s and 60s and still present themselves as sex symbols. With women, on the other hand, people say, 'Why doesn't she retire?'
Tracy Chapman
#19. I'll toss my coins in the fountain,
Look for clovers in grassy lawns
Search for shooting stars in the night
Cross my fingers and dream on.
Tracy Chapman
#21. I think it's important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in.
Tracy Chapman
#22. I'm never sure if I'll ever write another song, what the song will be about and if what initially sparked the beginning of a song might complete it.
Tracy Chapman
#23. I meet people in my daily life, people who seem to experience some change and some growth on a personal level, and that gives me hope.
Tracy Chapman
#24. 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.
Tracy Chapman
#25. Some folks call her a runaway. A failure in the race. But she knows where her ticket takes her. She will find her place in the sun
Tracy Chapman
#26. At this point in my life I'd like to live as if only love mattered.
Tracy Chapman
#27. 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.
Tracy Chapman
#28. We are the spirit, the collective conscience. We create the pain, and suffering, and beauty in this world.
Tracy Chapman
#29. Love is hate
War is Peace
No is Yes
And we're all free.
Tracy Chapman
#30. You got a fast car
But is it fast enough so we can fly away
We gotta make a decision
We leave tonight or live and die this way.
Tracy Chapman
#31. 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.
Tracy Chapman
#32. 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.
Tracy Chapman
#33. It's time to start all over/make a new beginning.
Tracy Chapman
#34. As a child I always had a sense of social conditions and political situations. I think it had to do with the fact that my mother was always discussing things with my sister and me - also because I read a lot.
Tracy Chapman
#35. I think many people would say that writers like Stephen King have hypergraphia.
Tracy Chapman
#36. I don't try to project any image at all, other than the person that I am.
Tracy Chapman
#37. A lot of kids spent more time out of school than in, but I always loved school and thought it was my way out of Cleveland, and out of poverty.
Tracy Chapman
#38. So don't be tempted by the shiny apple Don't you eat of a bitter fruit Hunger only for a taste of justice Hunger only for a world of truth 'Cause all that you have is your soul.
Tracy Chapman
#39. Renounce all those material things that you gained by exploiting other human beings.
Tracy Chapman
#40. What does the future look like if the heads of society ask our young people to risk their lives for questionable causes? I think it looks rather bleak.
Tracy Chapman
#41. Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control.
Tracy Chapman
#42. 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.
Tracy Chapman
#43. I love living in California and being able to go to the beach or go to the woods.
Tracy Chapman
#44. If you are living a life that feels right to you, if you're willing to take creative chances or a creative path that feels like it's mostly in keeping with your sensibilities, you know, aesthetic and artistic, then that's what matters.
Tracy Chapman
#45. Why do babies starve /When there's enough food to feed the world /Why when there's so many of us /Are there people still alone
Tracy Chapman
#46. As you might imagine, I'm approached by lots of organizations and lots of people who want me to support their various charitable efforts in some way. And I look at those requests, and I basically try to do what I can.
Tracy Chapman
#47. I'm not sure if the next song I write is going to be about love or a song about a tree.
Tracy Chapman
#48. 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.
Tracy Chapman
#50. I often write either really early in the morning, or really late at night.
Tracy Chapman
#51. 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.
Tracy Chapman
#52. So much has happened to obscure the dialogue about race and about gender and discrimination in general, especially where those things touch on economics.
Tracy Chapman
#53. The way popular music is categorized and formatted cuts down on everyone's options. And although people don't talk about it, there are a lot of issues of race determining musical categories of what's rock, R&B, or even folk. It ends up restricting creativity.
Tracy Chapman
#54. I picked up the guitar at 11, but even before then, I was writing songs on the organ.
Tracy Chapman
#55. 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.
Tracy Chapman
#56. 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.
Tracy Chapman
#57. As a child, I spent a lot of time at the library.
Tracy Chapman
#58. Maybe it's naive to say, but it almost seems like, in the past, people tried to sell you something you would actually need, like a hammer or a broom or a toothbrush. But now there's this notion that they can sell you anything. And all they have to do is convince you that you need it.
Tracy Chapman
#59. I've seen and met angels wearing the disguise of ordinary people living ordinary lives.
Tracy Chapman
#60. I really love playing music with other people. It's more fun to be on the road with others. It's kind of lonely out there when you play on your own!
Tracy Chapman
#61. I'm still thinking and hoping there's an opportunity for people to have better lives and that significant change can occur.
Tracy Chapman
#62. I found myself in the middle of a race riot when I was about 14 years old, and I found someone pointing a gun at me and telling me to run or they'd shoot me.
Tracy Chapman
#63. I may be revered or defamed and decried; But I tried to live my life right.
Tracy Chapman
#64. Music was never just a hobby for me. I'd pick up a guitar every day to work on whatever I was writing at the time. I would put my ideas in songs the way some people might put them in diaries or journals.
Tracy Chapman
#65. I'm not sure about anything as far as religion and spirituality go.
Tracy Chapman
#66. Now love's the only thing thats free. We must take it where it's found. Pretty soon it may be costly.
Tracy Chapman
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