I love writing songs, but I don't want to write the songs everyone else is asking me to write.
— Linda Perry
It's a humbling and amazing journey when you write a song in your bedroom, and you've got no money, and you're trying to write a song based on where you're at right at this moment.
I don't care if I go broke. I don't care about all that stuff. I just want to know that I did everything I wanted to do.
I'm a fast learner, and I believe in change, and I believe in growing, and I believe in moving forward and not staying in the same place.
I was scared of failure, of being a one-hit wonder, never being able to write another song again, never being able to sing again. Maybe everything that I think I am and who I want to be never will happen.
If you want to be famous, you can.
My family, they are definitely not an ordinary family.
Rock & roll doesn't belong on a grid. It belongs on a pulse - a natural pulse.
It's not a 'sexy' position, being the producer. You have to be very bossy. You have to be very aggressive.
I don't ever get too literal.
I love just helping people; that's what I'm good at.
I love Pink, and I love Christina Aguilera. Something about Christina always inspires me to do things that are really different.
I want to be perceived - or maybe I perceive myself - as this really easygoing, honest person that's just giving. Realistically, I have those qualities, but I'm very aggressive. I can be very harsh. It comes off almost mean, you know?
There's a lot of artists that are celebrities, not really artists.
The L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center has this wonderful program where they take in the youth, feed them, help them learn how to cook, clean, they help them get jobs, help them learn how to save their money, and they have shelters all over the city.
I don't read music. I refuse to learn how to do that. I barely know half the chords I'm playing. I like being naive when it comes to that.
My process of songwriting comes from a very real place: a place that when you watch 'American Idol' - God bless it, it's probably an awesome experience that these people are having, but it's not a real one.
There's nothing you could do to me, nothing you could take away from me that would make me feel like I wasn't going to be all right.
It'll never get old to hear a song that I wrote on the radio or to hear what someone experienced when they heard a song I wrote.
To me, I feel like everything I touch will do good. Because my heart and my passion is all in the right spot. And you can't go wrong with that. But maybe I'm naive.
I don't feel the need to be in the spotlight whatsoever.
People come to me to write songs that will be successful for them, and they allow me the freedom to do so.
I love being home. I play with my dogs.
I just love music. I love writing songs. It's not even a job; it's a gift. I'm waiting for someone to kick me out of the party because I snuck in here, and I keep thinking somebody's going to figure out that I have no clue. Turns out that most of them have even less of a clue.
If you're not confident, people push you around. That's it. It's super-simple.
A lot of people call me a 'machine,' and I don't think a lot of men or women operate the way I do.
We're married. We are one now. There's no running away. We have to deal with things together and figure them out, and that's the greatest gift. I'm in it. People ask me, 'How do you maintain a relationship?' I don't know, but all I do know is that I chose Sara to be the one, and when I choose something, that's all that matters, and I'm totally in.
I would love for Radiohead to give me a call and say, 'Hey, kid, we wanna see what it's like working with you. We want you to produce our next record.'
I want to be so giving and collaborative, but my best songs were written on my own.
I'm just in tune to myself and what I need from the universe.
I'm a songwriter, an artist, and a musician. I do not have to try to be that; I just am.
I'm extremely hard to work with.
I've been touching instruments since the day I was born. My mother is Brazilian, and she listens to Brazilian music. My father was a musician, and I've seen pictures of him when he was in a band playing guitar and piano. He loved country music, Frank Sinatra, and stuff like that.
I've had many songs where I've gone, 'Oh, my God, this song is going to be huge!' but it wasn't the right artist, or something just didn't happen. It didn't make the song any worse. It just didn't line up. That does happen.
I've lived out in a park sleeping on the grass with no place to go; I've not eaten. I've been there.
Sometimes I'll look back at old pictures where I'm a little heavy and dressed funny and think, 'How did I get chicks all the time?'
One day, it hit me that music is my calling. I just started playing and writing music. How, I don't know. I just started doing it, and then this big voice came out of my mouth. And it felt like I was releasing something.
I get to do all the styles of music that I love. There's no boundaries; there's nobody holding on to me saying I can't do that.
To give is one of the greatest gifts one could ever receive.
I wanted to go back to writing for myself and my fans. I built my own recording studio, started my own label, and decided to use the Internet to sell my records.
Record companies don't think creatively about what something could possibly be because they are not filled with creative people. Nobody's looking at the future of music because they're concentrating so hard on what they can get from it right this second. It's really hard to see an artist; it's a lot easier to see money.
Rick Rubin's amazing, by the way. I just need to say that.
I'm not a children's songwriter. I'm not in that world.
I was raised in a time when parents brought out belts, and you got tough love.
I want to be a producer and not a songwriter.
I'm great at working with people and collaborating. And if my biggest gift of all is that I'm really good at pulling things from people and helping them become better at what they're doing, I'm here, as I believe all of us are, to be of service.
You need a big team to support a career.
'American Idol' is a machine. It's a machine that's making a lot of money, that's selling a lot of product. It's 'American Marketing.'
In no way am I a spiritual person. I'm not some guru geek.
You create something in your bedroom or your house, and it's just a fun thing that you're doing. Then, all of a sudden, you hear that song that you started in your house, and it's on the radio. And people are now acknowledging it. It's just trippy. What a life.
