Genre Classification Quotes

People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play.

I can't tell you what genre Maroon 5 is in. I don't know if they're rock or pop or alternative. I don't know what they are. I have a hard time separating that stuff. I just know what I like when I hear it.

I think it's really hard to draw a hard-and-fast line and say 'Grimm's Fairy Tales' doesn't count as science fiction or fantasy. Or at what point do we say mythology is not fantasy, so reading mythology when you're young does not count as an exposure to fantasy?

'Dreams from My Father' was not a memoir or an autobiography; it was instead, in multitudinous ways, without any question a work of historical fiction.

I don't really think of myself as a folk singer.

Am I R&B because I'm black? Am I pop because I have a song called 'Milkshake'? Or can I just be who the hell I am? Good Lord, people make it seem like we're doing heart transplants here, but we're just making music!

When I look at Perfidia, I think, "That's a Pulitzer Prize winner. That's a National Book Award winner." It's not going to get it. It's going to be shelved in crime and it's just the way it is. I've done something that no one else has ever done; I've started out as a mystery writer, a police writer, and a crime writer, and I became something entirely different.

Genre, to me, is not all that important, and it never has been.

I don't think I am a soul singer and definitely don't think that I am a country artist by any stretch.

We're a rock band. We're proud of it. We're not an art band, a noise band, or an extreme band.

I used to think of 'alternative rock' as a radio format, kind of the way 'indie rock' used to have more meaning. But it means different things depending on where you are or what country you're in.

I think the whole stigma of 'black movies' is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like '12 Years A Slave,' to 'The Butler,' to 'The Best Man,' to 'Ride Along,' to even 'Think Like a Man' from last year - these movies are just good movies.

When I listen to a Coldplay record, you're gonna hear an indie band, and you know that's what you're gonna get from Coldplay. With myself, I'm not sure it's the same.

The distinctions of what makes a book one genre or another can sometimes be a bit muddy, but generally it's a matter of projecting who the audience will be, which is a judgment that's based on the subject matter. 'Mainstream' is the cleanest label for a book that draws readers of both sexes and from a wide age-range.

My music puts people in a dreamy mood. It's edgy. It's nuanced. I get annoyed when people say it's R&B because it's not that simple. I call it futuristic soul.

I don't think of myself as a mystery or thriller writer, honestly. I am in awe of mystery writers and don't think I have what it takes to write such a book.

Because of 'Terminator 2,' you get not pigeonholed but circled as one of those guys who can understand their way through a movie like that and hold it down.

Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are.

I don't think a song should be put in a category.

Science fiction is anything published as science fiction.

Music is music; you can't change rock and say well this is punk rock and this is acid rock or rockabilly.

I never thought of Green Day as a punk band. Just bubblegum, really.

Pop just means popular - it can be any genre, and if it becomes popular, then it's pop music.

Hip-hop is rock & roll. What the hell is Wu-Tang but Motorhead?

I'm always accused of being a crime novelist, but I'm not really.