I just happened to be in Paris during one of the fashion weeks and was out one night at a table with a few supermodels. I was sitting next to Michael Hutchence of INXS and at one point I turned to him and said, 'I feel like the meat in a supermodel sandwich.'
— Terence Trent D'Arby
Everybody wants to go to heaven but very few people are willing to die.
I can stay in my house for a week straight without seeing anyone.
That's all I think my job is, to make my own contribution.
The artist is inherently a romantic to some degree, and as such, I believe in a muse. But I don't try to analyze too much where it comes from.
I went from one day being toasted to being roasted.
In Milan, I'm treated with the respect that doctors receive in America. It's wonderful living where artists are revered.
I've seen too many people who have been artists for a long time, on that cycle of record-promote-tour, and you look up and 10 years of your life is gone. I didn't want that to happen to me.
It's imperative that I have another channel to pour ideas into, that have been with me for quite a while, that it would be hard for people to kind of accept on first listen. Some of that would be more classically based stuff and some more jazz based.
Everything that, by the grace of the universe, I was able to become is the direct result of everything I went through.
My album is better than 'Sgt. Pepper.'
I've always been blessed, or cursed, with perception.
It wasn't necessarily my choice to disappear.
Terence Trent D'Arby is the vehicle through which Sananda will let his light shine. I don't know what Sananda means and I have not allowed myself to find out.
Real talent is mixing realism with bluff. Every great artist I really respect has a certain amount of bluff; sooner or later you have to be a conjurer, and conjure images.
Everyone has a cross to bear. Sometimes I have to take the splinters out of my shoulders.
In some very real way, rock 'n' roll is like a religion to me.
It's like I'm coming to a realization that I'm not Terence Trent D'Arby. I'm the soul playing a role of this character that was written.
I've been privy to certain experiences which have allowed me to realize how fleeting time is, in any case, and how ultimately not important this is. 'This' being the things perhaps we trip on in life.
When I lived in England my perception of what people thought of me was largely formed by the media.
Our society and media have lost touch with the job of the artist. The job of the artist has been subordinated to the job of the record seller.
The fact that you can even make a record and leave a document that you were here, that's nothing to sneeze at.
I am not a greedy person.
I have to follow my own vision.
The experiences and feelings I have are starting to outweigh the words available to explain them.
The version I got of Christianity was quite confusing to me, even as a child, because there were certain things that didn't add up.
I know that some people view me as a bit manufactured. But I can't be Whitney Houston: somebody who is polite and perfect and appeals to your mother and your grandfather.
I have a gut instinctive feeling that I will be as massive as Madonna, as massive as Michael Jackson... Whitney Houston, sure.
I seem to have been possessed by a mind of my own and I did not merely want to be a pop product, but I wanted to be an artist which was always my ambition.
You can't expect a poodle to guard your house the way a Doberman pinscher does, and you can't expect a Doberman pinscher to jump in your lap the way a poodle does. Some people are just animals of a certain nature, and they are always going to have certain impulses that motivate them.
I am a holographic representation in the third dimension of what was requested by your souls that one of your favourite artists be.
At the time of 'Neither Fish Nor Flesh's non-performance in the marketplace - I believe that's the expression - every single thing hit me at once. Legal situations, financial situations, the mother of my daughter and I were splitting up, everything.
I think it is safe to say, as a huge fan of music, that between 1967 and 1972 was the renaissance of rock music. That's when all the forces combined together-the talent that was available and the freedom for the artists. The industry hadn't become so gigantic.
In the first place, I was never a very outgoing, public person. That was a facade.
To carry a false persona is an extra burden. Who needs that?
There's a part of me which feels content to leave songs in a vault not to be heard until after my death.
Some small part of what the artist does is for approval of others.
Songs come to me and I hear them. At least in part, they are very complete; I hear the whole chorus, including the drum pattern, the base, the countermelody, the basic harmonic structure and the main thrust of the lyric.
I always say that at some times you can lose perspective.
There are no calculations in the records I make. I record as many songs as I can. Songs that I think are my best.
I'm the type of person that, when it's my time in the spotlight, I'll do my duty in the spotlight. When it's not, and it's another person's time, I'll go away.
I'm not sure a lot of us in the music business or in rock 'n' roll are given credit for irony or humor.
I want to be a member of the team that helps in any way possible for the evolution of people's souls. Because too much encourages us to spend too much time with our lower nature, and we have a higher nature as well.
I obviously wouldn't say on nationwide TV that I thought America was racist, sexist, homophobic and violent if they asked me why I left. I would just say America wasn't a culture I felt comfortable in. But anybody with a brain would understand what I'm trying to say.
Looks are like honey: They'll attract flies, bees, bears, but they won't necessarily keep them.
So for my own survival and my growth, as a soul, as an artist and as an emotional being, it was best that I assume an identity I didn't have to fight anyone over or that I have to constantly engage in constant tug of wars and just reinvent myself.
A lot of people wanted 'The Hardline, Part II,' and there was no way I was going to do that.
If you state the obvious long enough, other people will pick up on what you're talking about and examine it. And usually they'll swallow it.
I'm a genius.
I believe every major strength we have can be used against us as a weakness. At the same time, things that people see as weakness can be part of our strength.
