Michael O'Keefe Quotes

I sometimes listen to music to get into some place that I need to get. I don't think it's because I have a musician as a father that I do this - most actors do.

For a long time, I resisted seeing 'The Sound of Music,' but when I finally did, I cried.

Listen to your inner-voice: Surround yourself with loving, nurturing people. Fall in love with your art and find yourself. Music is the great communicator.

If my mother hadn't been trying to be a writer, I don't know if I would have thought of it myself.

When I sing I have a lot of visions. Like what's happening now in my life.

When I was 4 or 5 and I could put complete thoughts together and really feel them, I remember watching the Grammy's or something like that and getting real emotional because I wanted to be up there.

I went to Ithaca, found the Grateful Dead and my life was changed.

I've learned how much of an impact that music has on people. I get messages all the time from people telling me what my music means to them and what it has done to them.

Music has always been profoundly important to me.

When you're young you don't think, 'This person is going to change your life.' But when you start recording your own songs, it comes back and reminds you.

I think that's the whole point of music - to inspire people.

When I went to see certain shows when I was a kid, they changed my life. They made me tap into that place inside myself that I was unable to get to, so music is that tool, that bridge, and that's the kind of music I'm interested in making.

I like to look at 'A Place in the Sun' every now and get inspired by it.

One of my heroes is a composer named James Bernard, and oh my God... I can still listen to his music today and be stirred and moved by it. But I think that you fall in love with... Well, again, when you're young, it really is more powerful. Much more terrifying.

People tell us they have been inspired by our music to do great things.

I was inspired to create 'My Life' so I could finally share a personal part of my life beyond my music.

Art has absolutely changed my life.

Ed Sheeran wrote his songs, so I wanted to write my own songs.

But when I hear a great song, I can't help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

There was this girl who went to my school, and she did a Nikki Giovanni poem, 'Ego Tripping,' and it was just different from everyone else's. It wasn't flat recitation. It had an energy and a life to it. And it made me sit up in my seat, and my eyes got wide, and I really felt inside myself, 'She's making me feel things. I want to do that.'

I saw 'Joy Luck Club' when it came out, so that was early mid-'90s, and I remember seeing it with my long-time collaborator, Mina Shum. We'd just done 'Double Happiness,' and we saw this movie, and we were weeping. Like, shuddering weeping. Weeping more than really the film deserved.

No matter what, I will always hope for that day when I look around and can say, 'Oh yeah, I wrote a song that touched me emotionally the way that a song like 'She's Got A Way,' by Billy Joel did.'

AWe musicians can influence, and are responsible to influence, human hearts when we perform. We have to touch them.

My music is inspired by where I am and what I'm feeling at the time. Traveling and meeting new people is also incredibly inspiring to me.

It's weird: I don't really know where I pull my inspiration from. I think it's N.E.R.D.