Toots Thielemans Quotes

I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.

Peter would think her sentimental. So she was. For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying – what one felt. Cleverness was silly. One must say simply what one felt.

True feeling justifies whatever it may cost.

Why can't people just say they were moved? Why do they have to say it's sappy?

I had to try and find a way to express happiness without sounding corny.

I can't fake emotion.

Emotional sounds don't lie.

It's hard for me to fake smile. I personally think I look stupid fake smiling.

Self-expression is my goal, I want to be real with my feelings. Singing and dancing and all the joy that goes with performing come from my heart. If I can't feel it, I won't do it.

We wanted to make something that sounded perfect because of the quality of the emotion...the honesty.

Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don't worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent.

It takes great labor to uncover the convincing simple speech of the heart. Poetic candor comes with hard labor, so even does impetuosity and impudence.

If you're striving for strong emotion and strong sentiment, and you're authentic with it and honest with it, then you're on the right side of the line. But if you step into sentimentality, there is a false move or a false tone to it.

Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

I try to be genuine. I try to be real. It's such a subjective thing, but I try to convey an emotion.

An actress must be a woman whose emotional perceptions are true, and to make them so, she must have a fine contempt for any art or thought that betrays them for something false.

I write songs from the heart, and I don't hold back.

I think irony precludes really feeling deeply about anything. I just didn't want to be that kind of writer who found nothing that wasn't worth indictment. I admire Willa Cather so much because she was unafraid to have big feelings and put them on the page. I just want to be able to believe in things.

I feel what I sing, and I sing what I feel. Really, that's all I can do.

I've found that in now having experienced what it's like to make records and just through growing up in general that you should be expressive about what's affecting you instead of trying to sing about a subject just for the sake of other people getting something from it.

Ed is very sexy because his emotions are really there - not forced.

I never smile unless I mean it.

When you cry, you don't look very attractive; you look snotty and blotchy. People seem to manage to cry quite prettily these days, and to me, that smacks of not being very genuine.

I don't think you should try to be anything you're not. If you're not smiling all the time or always happy - I don't think it matters. If you're having bad day, show you're having a bad day. Don't try to put up something that's fake.

I say what's in my heart, and I do it in my concerts.