Chamillionaire Quotes

I've come to realize that people connect more when they know you're telling them the truth or some aspect of your story, some mutated version of how you are experiencing this life.

It's amazing when I do a gig how many people of different ages come up to me afterwards and chat to me about songs. The emotions I feel are what any person can relate to. Sometimes I'm just a narrator.

I believe in working with songs that have personal value for me.

You want to have a song that people will listen to and go, 'Oh, yeah! That reminds me of something in my life,' or, 'something I'm currently going through,' or maybe something happens later and you hear the song and go, 'Wow! That really was telling a story that I can relate to now.' That's my hope.

I'm happy when people come up and say how they feel about what your character went through, you know, I went through and it's helping me deal with it. I get to see the movie through the audience's eyes and that's really gratifying.

Anything that happens after I write a song...that's fine with me. It's up to the listener to read into it what they need from it. And that's part of the reason I write like I do, so I can leave the holes in the right places so people can say, 'Yeah, that happened to me,' and they're able to have their own little fantasy about it.

For me a film is at its best when you can start filling in the story with your own life experience.

I think everybody wants to connect. There is nothing worse than feeling disconnected. And stories that really move people and make people care are the ones where they feel some sort of connection.

When someone tells me what he or she was doing the first time they heard a song of mine, then I've done a good job. If my song becomes about your life, then I'm successful.

Funny the way it is, not right or wrong, somebody's heart is broken, and it becomes your favorite song.

I have to feel something emotionally on the story to be able to write for it. I turn things down if I don't feel I'm really right to tell that particular story.

The most compelling narrative, expressed in sentences with which I have no chemical reaction, or an adverse one, leaves me cold.

I think that talking about the personal specificity, personal details, is how you get the big, big audiences - by talking about your relationships or your personal tragedies. If you reach out with that energy, you'll touch people.

When I listen to a song, I don't say, 'Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.' I'm thinking, 'That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.'

And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.

How we absorb music is unique. I know what I do. When I'm listening to music, I tend to find myself in a song. That's what really makes you connect is if you feel what that song is saying.

There are conscious reasons and unconscious reasons why I pick something. You know, I have to be moved by the story and usually that means it has to touch me in some kind of personal place.

The best song is what resonates with that one person the most. It's why, if you ask a million people on the face of the Earth, they're all gonna have different favorite songs, their own best song ever, because that's the one that touched them the most.

Because of 'Wasn't Expecting That,' I've had a lot of people come up to me and say how I've written their lives or their grandparents' lives. It means the world to me that I helped in the tiniest way.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

I've listened to music all my life. I've always felt that music tells more stories sometimes than films, with more possibilities. Every time you listen to them, songs bring different images and moods - depending on where you are in your life, you can listen to a song, and it means something different.

Whenever I perform, people get me because I'm talking about things that people can identify with and relate to. I'm not just up there doing jokey, jokey, joke.

When you feel moved by the story, you want to tell that story.

If a story is telling a truth, then why shouldn't it affect everybody?

In terms of the parallels, I've never related less to a character than Riggan.