TRACY CHAPMAN

I'm still thinking and hoping there's an opportunity for people to have better lives and that significant change can occur.

After it's finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration.

I don't try to project any image at all, other than the person that I am.

So much has happened to obscure the dialogue about race and about gender and discrimination in general, especially where those things touch on economics.

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.

There are good reasons for being in jail - for protesting.

Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control.

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.

At this point in my life I'd like to live as if only love mattered.

I think many people would say that writers like Stephen King have hypergraphia.

We all must live our lives always feeling, always thinking the moment has arrived.

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.

Love's a recurring theme through my work.

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.

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.

Some things remain fragments, just the lyrics and melodies or a line or two or a verse.

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.

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.

I think it's important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in.

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.

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.

I picked up the guitar at 11, but even before then, I was writing songs on the organ.

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.

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?'

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.