Jim James Quotes

I try not to get trapped in any one musical or visual style at all.

I believe that music should really be without boundaries.

We learned pretty early on in this band that you can't have snobbery in music.

I never got tied down to any social scene. I was just into creating stuff. And I think, even today, that's how I'm able to work and move between so many different genres - I want to be part of what's happening, I want to make new things.

I just write songs from the heart, and you never know who'll like the songs. I try to make sure that I don't allow anybody's expectation to weigh on me. I have my own expectation of life. I believe in letting people be free.

I wanted to express myself. I wanted to be creative and I didn't want to worry about someone bossing me around in the process. You have to struggle no matter where you are to get to where you're going, so I'm like, working it honey!

I don't want to be labeled one thing. My main thing I care about is being able to create the things I want to do with my friends, whatever platform that is.

I'm very, very open to experimenting with different people and trying to find different methods of writing and making music.

Fortunately somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether.

Atlanta has become and has always been a place where you create your own universe.

Everybody in Lynyrd Skynyrd loves different styles of music, and our minds are very open when it comes to writing our songs and making the band true to what the band is, but also stepping out and doing something current.

I don't want to be stuck to any specific genre.

I have the space and liberty to create.

Of course, I'm open to all kinds of genres. In my head, there are no demarcations.

As an artist, I would never let myself get boxed in. I'm a human being, too, and like most humans, I have interest in many different types of music.

I have a sense of mission in a way. I've always worked on being free, as a woman and as an artist.

I was always very academically focused when I was growing up, and music was something for which I really had no preconceptions or expectations for myself or really any rules. It kind of represented, at least for me, a divergent path of creativity and self-discovery.

I wanted to pursue my own thing - I had desires, ideas I wanted to accomplish, and I needed to be on my own for that.

New York is the opposite of East Germany, the crown of individuality. That's why I can work well here and find out what I personally think of the pieces I'm learning. I can lay aside all the baggage of German education. In any case, whatever I do, I can't lose it altogether.

Coming out of a group, it's always really fun and creative to do your own thing.

I figured out that it was important for me to have my identity, just live independently and like being myself, musically.

Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.

Find people who think like you and stick with them. Make only music you are passionate about. Work only with people you like and trust. Don't sign anything.

It's a very subjective, personal, instinctive approach as musicians of saying, 'We don't want to replace what's around; we just want to widen the possibilities.'

I never thought that I would be creating my own 'cross-over' genre. What I did was very real and organic. I have worked in so many different styles so it all just came together.